Jane Iredale's Blog

Too Beautiful

2011-08-12T08:51:00.000-07:00

It isn't good to be too beautiful. You start to attract attention. People want to look at you. They spread the word and then more people want to look at you and then more and more. Soon they start to photograph you and romanticize you, and then you have to be very strong to stay unspoiled or you have to have a lot of the right kind of help.

Ha Long Bay in Viet Nam is too beautiful. Even though it’s been designated a World Heritage Site, that hasn't helped to protect it from itself.

The geology nut in me has always wanted to see these limestone monoliths (1,969 to be precise) rising out of the South China Sea. And from all that I'd read and heard, it was easy to romanticize it. Clear, calm waters (calm is an important feature for someone like me who gets so seasick, I want to throw myself overboard and would be happy to drown), dolphins playing, unexplored caves, misty mornings and red-sailed junks increasing the wonder of it all. The wonder of imagining a 500 million year-old coral reef, the largest in history, made from unimaginable trillions, googols, in fact, of tiny crustaceans fusing to form a limestone mass so large that it stretched from Bali to Thailand. And then the elements and tectonic uplift taking 200 million years to carve this enormous mass into monuments to a primeval world that wouldn't recognize itself today.

The misty mornings still exist, though, in fact misty afternoons and evenings too, (it’s damp!), but the water isn't clear and the dolphins have long since left to be replaced by floating garbage. Oil skims the top of the water left by red sail junks now under power. The sails are just for show.

We left Hanoi in a tourist bus, which conveniently stopped at designated souvenir shops along the way, and arrived to admire the Vietnamese science of organizing world-wide converging tourists: stand in line; tickets checked; numbers called; walk in group to waiting ferry; motor to moored junk bobbing with other moored junks. Which one is ours? Hope it's that one over there. Oh, it looks as though we're headed for the little one with holes in. Let's check for life jackets as soon as we can.

But even an ailing junk is made to feel like home by the Vietnamese courtesy and warmth. Lunch is a truly delicious and simple five course meal of fresh seafood, peppered with the anticipation of casting off. Slowly, slowly we head into the mist and the waiting giants. Three days without Wi-Fi and touching land.

We did touch land, of course -- but not with our feet. We touched it with our hands as we kayaked into caves covered with the fossils of millions of razor-sharp mussels. It's impossible to get a toe-hole on land because the monoliths (called karsts) rise like icebergs from the ocean floor. This is why the fishing villages are floating on foraged Styrofoam.

Recent inhabitants of Ha Long Bay (translated as Bay of the Descending Dragon), these resourceful people have formed communities in the lee of some of the more sheltered areas, all the better to be protected from typhoons, and are making a subsistence living and raising families. It’s easy to fall off these floating islands, so children learn to swim and row boats very early. They go to small school houses on their own islands of Styrofoam. As dawn breaks, the men head out in flimsy boats to fish in deeper waters. Some have created mussel and clam farms in buckets which we pass over in our kayaks. The young women of the villages row flat boats to the tourist junks offering sodas and Ritz Crackers. We buy some, of course, and ask for permission to take pictures. They shyly agree only then lifting their faces to us with beautiful smiles.

At night, our junk shelters in an area surrounded by ancient karsts whose shadows are so deep they create a damp chill that makes our hot fish soup even more delicious. One by one, other junks maneuver into our space -- a junk parking lot. I have to admit that there is a certain comfort to this camaraderie as the karsts loom over us speaking to our transience and their permanence. In the morning, our young women are back in their rowboat but this time trying to gather up the floating garbage with long-handled fishing nets. I'm still mystified by this.

Back in Hanoi, I take a bath. The three-day dampness had chilled my bones. As I lie luxuriating in the water thinking of Ha Long Bay's tainted magnificence, I mull on the fishing villages and their beautiful women. Where do they get hot water so they can luxuriate in a bath? For that matter, where do they get any water at all? What do they use for lights? Do they ever see television? Where do they go on a date? Do they pay attention to the way they look or when survival is so difficult, does that matter? The mulling continues and then I remember that when our two mermaids had raised their faces for us to take their picture, there was a hint of makeup. Yes, there was.

Jane Iredale

It's a Smaller World

2011-04-05T12:02:00.000-07:00

I first met her by telephone. Bob and I were sitting with our distributor's team at dinner in Malaysia wondering what to do with our free-day tomorrow when someone pulled out a phone, dialed a number and handed it to me. Quizzically, I took it. "Hello, this is Jane?" "Hello, Jane, this is Nicole. I hear you'd like some suggestions about what to do in Kuala Lumpur." "Oh! That would be very nice, thank you." What followed was a comprehensive list of suggestions that even The Lonely Planet would have envied. Even more surprising, Nicole seemed to anticipate exactly what might appeal to me, steering me to places that even our distributor hadn't heard of. But what really caught my attention was her flawless English - which sounded exactly like my niece, Daisy, who lives in England. Exactly like her! I handed back the phone with my mouth open. A day later, I met Nicole at our planned event. This smart, funny, engaging young woman was in charge of IT. She walked towards me with a fabulous grin holding on to the arm of a companion to help her negotiate the room. She had been blind from birth. She set up my PowerPoint and told me to let her know if I needed anything. I didn't. It all went very smoothly until I stamped my foot on stage to emphasize a point and everything that was electrical went blank. Back-stage crew to the rescue! But, nothing, just black screens. I punted and panted and feigned light banter. Still, not a flicker. Relieved, I saw Nicole making her way to the front, and in seconds, I was back in business. After the event she waited patiently for the conversations and photographs to end and then we had time to chat. She had been an exchange student in England, not far from where Daisy lives, which accounted for the similarities in speech. She longed for her independent days there. In Malaysia, a Muslim country, she isn't allowed a seeing-eye dog. Dogs, thought to be unclean, are not allowed in public places. Neither is she allowed an ATM or credit card, as it is assumed she'll lose them. Her smile faded when she said, "I find it rather debasing." Later, she taught me a Malaysian game played with beads that got quite competitive. I intend to win next time. She showed me the most high-tech machine I've seen yet. Sent to her from her host-family in England, it allows her to access the Internet in Braille. She reads and answers her own e-mails. "I'm a real geek," she confessed. As we were saying goodbye, she asked me one last question, "How are Cookie and Ceilidh?" What?! "I read about them on your blog. I'm sorry about your boots." That was the moment I stopped complaining about the intrusiveness of the Internet and was silent all the way home.

Lessons Along the River Bank

2010-12-20T14:05:00.000-08:00

It was a dark and stormy night…. no it wasn’t. It was a beautiful fall morning. The orange leaves looked even brighter against a blue sky, proving once again that complementary colors make each other pop. The air had a fresh, slightly damp smell kicked up by the fallen leaves. I was all dressed and ready for work complete with new boots with heels. (It’s still a treat to be able to wear heels after almost a year in flats.)

I was moving toward the door, when I happened to look into the eyes of my beloved Labrador who was clearly indicating that she thought it was a beautiful day too, and perhaps there might be walkies in her future. What can you do? I grabbed a leash for her and for Cookie (her 5lb sister) and off we went. A walk along the river was the clear choice with meadows, protected woods and leash-free pleasure. I rarely have to use a leash for Ceilidh (kay-lee, the Gaelic word for celebration, which she is) but I always use one for Cookie (short for Christmas Cookie since she was born a year ago on Christmas day) because she’s very fast and makes her own decisions about responding to the word, “Come!” But she never strays far from her big sister so I felt secure in letting her enjoy some freedom on this glorious day.

It’s been interesting to see the relationship develop between my two companions. Ceilidh will be thirteen in January, still lively, enjoying life and relishing her raw food diet. She’s never met a dog or human she didn’t like so I thought I had a good chance with her accepting a new puppy. When Cookie arrived, she was eleven weeks and just under two pounds. She was about the size of one of Ceilidh’s ears. My fears of having her inadvertently squashed by a playful paw went unfounded with Ceilidh’s supreme indifference to the new member of our family. Cookie, on the other hand, had an immediate crush on the coolest dog she’d seen in her young life. Every opportunity to be in Ceilidh’s face was seized with gusto including swinging from that Labrador trademark -- soft, silky ears. Still, we scrupulously maintained the hierarchy and Cookie was clear who was top dog even though she tried to share Ceilidh’s bed and was firmly rejected.

On this beautiful morning, I have to admit that I was in my own world. I loved watching the dogs running, sniffing, exploring, living in the moment. I took a lesson from them and told myself that work can wait for half an hour while I drank in the gloriousness of this day and told the universe how grateful I was to be independent again and walking freely. I watched the river, swollen with recent rain, racing through over-hanging trees and foaming its way up and around those famous New England boulders left by ancient glaciers. I thought, “I bet its cold in there.”

It was then that I realized that Cookie wasn’t in sight. Unworried, I called. I called again. Even though her response time depends on her mood, she will generally show up, if only to make sure she isn’t missing a treat. I called again, this time I heard my voice go up an octave. Ceilidh was throwing side-glances at me. I walked towards the river bank which was particularly high and steep in this area. No way, she went down there. At five pounds, it must have looked like the Klondike. But I’d forgotten that she’s fearless. Ceilidh and I approached cautiously, me picking my way through the long wet grass in my new boots and trying not to get snagged by the various bushes. At last, close enough to peer over the edge.

And there she was, big round eyes looking up at us. Relieved to my core, I urged her upwards. She did try. I watched her as she backed up as far as she could without falling in the river and hurl herself at the slippery bank. She’d make it half-way up, suspend for a moment and then fall back down again. I was helpless having left all means of communication behind. It was then that Ceilidh took matters into her own paws. She surveyed the bank, walked along it and then cut diagonally across winding her way down until she reached the river. There the great Labrador stood, wagging her tail ready to lead Cookie to safety. Heart in my mouth, I watched Cookie get the message and walk forward perilously close to the rushing river – but she was thwarted by an impenetrable bramble; although she tried several times she couldn’t get through. Ceilidh stood for a moment, assessed the problem and climbed the bank back to me. Her look said, “Now it’s your turn.”

There was nothing for it; I had to go down. I eyed a sapling in the middle of the downward slope, set it in my sights and slithered towards it trusting it would stop my momentum, which it did. Fortunately, it was the perfect size to fix my heel around. Grieving for my boots as the mud oozed its way into the stitching, I reached lower and lower to try to grasp Cookie. She was tantalizingly close, about an inch away from my outstretched hand. I used all of my coaxing skills and finally, I was able to slip a finger into her collar and pull her towards me. Head-first down the bank, I twisted around and with one quick motion, I sort of threw her up the Klondike where I told her that if she moved, she was a hot dog.

Ceilidh had worked her way down the bank and was right by my side as I considered my options: a) remove my heel from its tenuous hold on this sapling and slide down the bank hoping that I don’t end up in the river, b) claw my way up the bank on all fours hoping that I don’t slide down the bank and end up in the river. Neither option particularly appealed. Ceilidh’s eyes said, “You’re stuck.”

Then I saw a root sticking out and I pulled on it. It released. I pulled again. It released again. Again and again until finally it held. Now we’re cooking. Bit by bit, pulling on this propitious root, I inched my way up the bank to victory and the three of us were on level ground at last. Cookie made no protest when I fixed her firmly to the leash. Ceilidh walked quietly by my side – mission accomplished.

When I look at myself in the mirror, nature-girl stares back. Leaves are woven liberally through my hair and mud decorates my cheeks. There’s nothing for it, I have to start all over again, (the older I get the longer it takes). But before I tackle the restoration, I realize that I’m feeling exhilarated and alive. It’s been years since I climbed a mud bank or used my wits to get out of a scrape. And I look at my partners in crime and see that they enjoyed it, too. But more than anything else, I marvel at the amount of wordless communication that took place in those few minutes. I marvel at the way Ceilidh figured out the problem and worked out a potential solution. Words can’t express how I feel as I look into her chocolate eyes, and loyalty and love look back. I pick up my little one and give her a hug; she licks my nose.

Now it’s December and the river that was cold in the fall will be frozen soon. We won’t be walking along it again until the spring. And in between are the holidays. So this seems like the right opportunity to wish you all the happiest of times. May you always have someone to help you figure out life’s challenges. May you always have someone who likes nothing better than just to be with you. And may you always have the experience of unconditional love, even if it means letting someone swing on your ears.

Jane

Early Breast Cancer Detection

2010-12-13T09:31:00.000-08:00

For years, women have been relying on a combination of physical examinations and mammograms for early detection of any issues with their breast health. Mammography is a widely-used imaging technique that uses low-dose amplitude X-rays to examine the breast. Here in the United States, mammography is recommended every two years for women between fifty and seventy-four years of age. Mammography is a screening tool that can ultimately reduce mortality from breast cancer, but it is not without its problems. Women who are nursing, on hormone replacement, or who have fibrocystic, large or enhanced breasts, can sometimes experience difficulty with mammogram readings. For reasons that are unfortunately not yet understood, approximately 20% of cancers can’t be detected by mammography.

Enter Digital Infrared Imaging (or breast thermography), a new detection method at the frontline of early breast cancer detection. Breast thermography is based on the idea that metabolic activity and vascular circulation is higher around a developing breast cancer than it is in normal breast tissue. This method uses ultra-sensitive infrared cameras and computers to produce high-resolution images of any irregularities in temperature in the breast area. Mammography, ultrasound, MRIs and other structural imaging tools rely on the detection of a physical tumor. Thermography detects heat and other metabolic changes associated with a tumor’s genesis and growth. Because of its extreme sophistication, infrared imaging can detect temperature variations that could suggest a pre-cancerous state of the breast that is not large enough to be detected by other structural imaging methods.

Now, I’m not suggesting that breast thermography is better than a mammogram, nor that you should replace your favorite breast detection method with it. However, the absolute prevention of breast cancer is not a reality for us, yet. Until it is (and I have faith that it will be!) we have to be proactive and fearless about empowering ourselves with a variety of ways to detect irregularities in our breast health.

I’ve recently come across another way to assist with your breast health, and it’s something you can do on a daily basis. It even has a fun name: Phluffing! Developed by Breast Massage Specialist and Advocate, Cheryl Chapman, Phluffing stands for Personal Hand Lymphatic Undulating Flow Facilitation. It consists of exercises you can do two minutes a day, twice a day to move the all important lymph fluid which has no pump of its own. I’ve been doing the exercises religiously myself, and I’m so enthusiastic about the improvement in my overall well being that I’ve put together a video for you. You can watch it here.

That’s all for now! You’ll be hearing more from me as we head into one of my very favorite times of the year, the holidays. Talk to you soon!

Digital Imagery Infrared Screen image used courtesy of Yohei Yamashita through Creative Commons. "The Happy Breast Book" is by Cheryl Chapman. Available here.

My Pink October

2010-11-18T07:59:00.000-08:00

Hello Everyone,

I’m excited to share news that will warm your heart as we head into the colder winter months. October marked the kickoff of our Rise Above with Love (RAWL) Campaign, and I finally have a chance to tell you about all the exciting things we did to celebrate.

We created RAWL to honor the support network around women living with, and through, breast cancer. Here in Great Barrington, we celebrated the launch with a whirlwind of events. Many lips were put to service in finding just the right shade of pink for our newest Sugar&Butter Lip Plumper and Exfoliator, which we named Phoenix in honor of the mythical bird that uses its own strength to overcome misfortune. We hosted an employee day at our home office where we had the chance to listen to three intelligent, inspiring and brave survivors: our own Business Consultant, Elaine Mahmarian; Elyse Spatz Caplan, Director of programs and partnerships at Living Beyond Breast Cancer and Bridget Hughes, Founder of The Pastures Cancer Retreat Center.

Several weeks later, we participated in a Face Forward walk that took place at The Pastures, which is a scenic drive from our home office. It took me longer to figure out how to upload photographs from this event than it took most of the participants to walk the hilly four-mile challenge, but I too, claimed victory. As you can see from the photographs, we had educators on hand to provide makeup tips to beautiful conquerors of all ages. After the walk, participants were invited to inscribe prayer flags with private messages, and share stories over homemade scones and apple cider.

Towards the end of October, accompanied by a serious case of the jitters, I travelled out to Albany to do an interview for NPR’s The Health Show. I had the opportunity to discuss our longstanding partnership with Living Beyond Breast Cancer, and was able to meet many of the people whose voices I’ve been listening to on air for so many years.

Last but not least (I told you it was a whirlwind!), the technological magicians in our digital department set up an inspiring microsite where people can upload their own stories and photographs to show the world how they have risen above, with love. I have no idea how they performed this technological miracle, but I do know you’ll enjoy it, so please do visit riseabovewithlove.com.

One of my goals for 2011 is to invent a contraption that will allow me to be physically present in three different places in one time, and let me tell you, I really could have used it in October. While we were certainly busy here in Massachusetts, our wonderful partners were even more so, organizing their own Rise Above with Love events all across the country.

Our dear friends at Belfiore and Day Spa in Texas had a turnout of over 150 people for their all-day event. Complimentary makeovers and mini-hair, nails and massage treatments were offered to all attendees to make them feel special and beautiful. The director of the Waypointe Breast Cancer Center for Women came out to speak, a local business sponsored a sassy fashion show, and balloons with handwritten messages were released to the uplifting sounds of a live jazz band. A local chiropractor was even on site to offer free spinal analysis and body composition measurements, and a local caterer donated all the food. You see why I wish I could be in multiple places at one time?

Further north, in Missouri, at the Belladona Salon and Spa, six hundred people turned out for a lively, fun event. Music was provided by a fantastic band, the lead singer of which is a breast cancer survivor herself. Businesses from all over town brought gifts, and the local hospital donated mammograms all day. The creative geniuses at Belladona put together bouquets made out of strawberries as their centerpieces. Pretty as a picture, and mouth watering, too!

Closer to our home office, at C.O Bigelow in Manhattan, our business consultants Elaine Mahmarian and Mary O’Connor were on hand to provide makeup tips and touchups to consumers whose lives have been affected by breast cancer. We had a window display throughout the entire month of October, and as you can see from the attached photo, it was such a lively space, the store’s cat, Allegra, decided to adopt it!

How do you work to raise breast cancer awareness among your family members and friends? I'd love to hear your ideas and feedback.

See how our garden grows!

2010-10-04T08:42:00.000-07:00

Here butterflies and bees fare far to rove

Amid the crumpled leaves of poppy flowers;

Here four o'clocks, to the passionate night above

Fling whiffs of perfume, like pale incense showers.

A little garden, loved with a great love!

-From “A Little Garden” by Amy Lowell (1874-1925)

I’m going to take a little time off from regaling you with stories of my rocky road to rehabilitation with news of an exciting event that took place at our headquarters here in Great Barrington, MA. Last winter, I joined the other members of our Green Team to discuss the creation of a company organic garden in the empty plot behind my mum’s house. We’re fortunate enough to own a lovely bit of sun-drenched land within walking distance of our local food bank. I had a vision of us toiling away in the garden, rewarding our efforts with lunches of crunchy carrots, crisp lettuce, and mouth watering berries, and putting together a basket of surplus produce for the food bank across the way. Well, dear readers, it happened. As I write this, I’ve got a mason jar full of fresh cut flowers on my desk, we’re reaping the benefits of a tasty fall harvest, and we’ve got a basket of juicy tomatoes and leeks en route to the food bank down the way.

It took quite a bit of effort to transform our cozy Green Team discussions about the garden into a garden. Now, I’m no newcomer to gardening. You might even say I have quite the green thumb. But when my husband announced that he intended to plant 20 yards of asparagus, I realized that we had to get organized. Really organized. And let me tell you, we did.

Because of its promises to save us (and our backs) from an invasion of weeds, we decided to adopt Mel Bartholomew’s square foot approach to gardening. We started out conservatively with a 42 x 18 plot, and got right down to the dirty work: we tilled the soil, brought in compost, dug soil beds, spread wood chips…we even constructed a compost bin! Somewhere around May when the black flies threatened to turn our joyful project into something of a nightmare, many non-Green Team members stepped in to get us past the least glamorous parts of the job. Bob did much of the digging with an impressively large and rented rototiller, employees brought in extra tools and contributed wood to make the bins, and many local farmers donated seeds and starter plants to help us with our exciting project.

From an initial list of about 40 vegetables, fruit and flowers we hoped to plant, we narrowed the selection down to 29. I’m proud to tell you that Bob’s 20 yards of asparagus did indeed, make the cut. (Check back in three years to find if they grew or not!) After a luscious, hot summer, we can’t give our heirloom tomatoes away fast enough. Beans, summer squash, kale, chard and leeks have also thrived. Our blueberries and strawberries have, too.

I want to give special attention here to three irreplaceable members of our Green Team; Margherita Lamanno, Megan Choquette and Mery Chaires. These three women put immense amounts of brain and muscle power into this garden, and set a great example for the rest of the team. Margherita worked extra hard to keep everyone informed with regular updates and photographs, along with seasonal recipes. I caught up with her recently to share our impressions of our first harvest. “What a fantastic first year garden we have!” She said. “It is a beautiful reflection of all our hard work and efforts as a community. It makes me smile looking out in the sunshine and to see butterflies dancing around our bounty.”

I, too, feel proud of our garden. The parallels between our growing garden and our growing company warm my heart. Both require hard work, dedication, a little bit of sweat, and some intuition. Both demand patience, and watering, too. One with real water, and one with ideas. I just can’t wait to share more of mine with you as our garden grows.

Thanks

2010-06-14T06:56:00.000-07:00

Jane with physical therapist, Don Carlos.

Both well protected from UV rays.

June 13, 2010

Epilogue

My friend took care of me so well that by the time she left, I’d graduated from a walker to the flashy cane that she bought me. The first few steps on the cane were a miracle in concentration. I fell into the therapist’s arms the way a baby does the first time she puts one foot in front of the other. There was even applause from my proud mother.

Later, I stayed with a friend in warmer climes and did physical therapy in her pool. It was the most fun I’d had for a long while. It felt so good to be weightless; gravity can really get you down.

Now I’m walking without a cane although I do use it at airports where people are much nicer to you when they see it. The same doesn’t apply at security. I was fully expecting to be hauled to one side as a suspect because my surgeon had warned me that I have enough metal in my leg to set off every alarm in the airport. I know it’s true because I made the mistake of looking at the x-ray, which I don’t advise. Somehow it makes it very real. What I saw was not only the 16” of titanium down my femur but also a diagonal rod that was holding the bone together. A new technique, my surgeon told me. “If you’d had the same injury five years ago, you would have been in traction for three months, by which time all your muscles would have atrophied. People used to die from this injury.” I feel much better now.

He gave me one of those cards to show when you go through security explaining why all the whistles and bells have been triggered. I was pulled out of the line (so embarrassing) and thoroughly frisked by a human in a uniform with gloves on; she even examined the bottom of my feet. (I’m convinced that it won’t be long before we have to go through security naked.) Anyway, I got to thinking that the next time I should try it without wearing my twelve inch belt buckle to see if it made a difference. So, on the return trip, I did, and sure enough, I got through without raising the constabulary. When I related this to my surgeon, he posited this question: “If you can get through with that much metal, doesn’t it make you wonder what other metal people can get away with?” I don’t want to think about that one.

SOME LESSONS:

Black ice doesn’t discriminate.
Appreciate the hospital staff. It isn’t their fault.
Never underestimate the power of a flower.
Keep hospital visits to thirty minutes. You’ll get more visits that way.
What you resist persists.
It wasn’t meant to be. It was an accident.
Eliminate “if only.” It was an accident.
Positive thoughts from those around you really do help.
Your own positive thoughts really do help.
Any improvement is better than no improvement. Then pat yourself on the back.
This is an opportunity to find out more about yourself.
Breaking your leg is a great excuse for afternoon naps.

This would be a good time to thank all of you who have read this series of posts and sent me encouraging words as well as sharing some of your experiences with me. All you Facebook fans, you’ve been wonderful. It was this incredible support that I received from people I know and people I don’t know that turned this experience into something that I could almost consider worthwhile.

There was one other thing which I’ll tell you about later. Her name is Cookie and she’s our new puppy. Born on Christmas day, she was one month old when I was taken to hospital. She, of course, was still with her mother, brother and sister and blissfully unaware of us. But she soon became an important part of my determination to get strong fast. She’s almost six months now and at last I’m fit enough to be able to take her and my beloved Labrador on walkies. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Thanks for listening!

It's a Wrap

2010-05-04T10:36:00.000-07:00

February 2, 2010
Dear Diary:

I’m used to doing my own hair and makeup. I do it every morning – well, I did. I haven’t looked at my face since the accident and I really don’t want to but today I confront the option of going on camera naked or with makeup; I’ll choose makeup. The lighting in my room is anything but flattering. I have no option but to sit with my back to the only window. I’m reminded of George Bernard Shaw’s song, "She could easily pass for forty-three, in the dusk with the light behind her.” I peer into a magnifying mirror about 4” wide. (Never look into a magnifying mirror after the age of 25.) I get through my well-honed routine strictly by feel. I know a few tricks, like applying color a bit more heavily than usual because the lights and camera will fade out everything. I look at my tired eyes and wonder if I’m going to fool anyone.

That’s done and here comes the hair bit. Everything rests on whether I can pull this together. I don’t have the kind of hair that looks great no matter what you do with it. It needs work – the right dryer, the right product, the right brush, the right spray. Perhaps I’ll wear a hat. Yet somehow even though I used nothing but soap, no conditioner, no leave-in moose, it’s a good hair day. Thanks Venus.

My friends arrive and help me to dress and then I’m pushed up to the room with flesh-toned walls. The crew has found a plastic Ficus for the background and we put one of the beautiful flower arrangements that have been sent to me on a table next to my chair. The camera frames the scene and it doesn’t look bad. What it doesn’t show is my leg propped up on a coffee table and my hospital slippers but that’s the magic of show biz. There are seven people crowded into a very small room which feels comfortingly familiar – sort of like my low-budget PBS shows.

We rehearse. The dreaded final paragraph, the paragraph that I’ve refused to change in spite of the fact that I can’t get through it without voluminous tears, looms up in my mind. Somehow this time I make it even though my throat feels as though it has a vice around it. What is it about these words that turn on the faucet in me? I think it’s because so many of the people who will be watching the video have known me for years. They really know me. We’ve shared happy, sad, challenging and victorious times. They’ve represented our brand with integrity and caring and I’m so appreciative that when I try to say thank you, it all spills over. Add the ingredients of missing them and feeling lonely and it’s a recipe for disaster.

Still, I’d rather be at our sales meeting electronically than not there at all so here I go. “Action!” I concentrate hard. I want to get it right so I can hear the magic words, “It’s a wrap!” Here comes the touchy bit and I sail through it without embarrassing myself. As we look at the play-back it’s clear that I didn’t exactly sail through it. The clenching of teeth and stiff upper lip don’t look massively attractive. We go for another take. I’m concentrating so hard when I come to the closing that I don’t even know what I’m saying. At the end, I smile. I’m done. Not so fast. My friend acting as the producer says, “Let’s just pick up this middle section. Stop when I say cut.” That’s easy. The middle section I can handle. I set off again and wait for the word cut, but it doesn’t come. So I keep going. I know this is a trick but it’s working and so I keep going until I’m right through the final paragraph. No clenched teeth, no stiff upper lip just me and my pals. This time, when someone says, “It’s a wrap,” I know it is.

When I’m rolled back into the room and everyone leaves, I experience what I used to experience when I’d finished a six week shoot – let down. The illusion had worked and fooled me into thinking I was back to life. Instead, I’m back in the hospital bed with a leg that feels as if it should belong to someone else. This isn’t the leg that ran me around a tennis court. This isn’t the leg that helped me dance the night away. This isn’t even the leg that took my dog on walkies. I feel so badly about what I’ve done to it that I start to go down that familiar path of torturing myself about what I could have done to have avoided it, and then – the phone’s ringing. It’s a friend from California. “I’m getting on a plane tomorrow and coming to look after you.” “You can’t do that! You’re three thousand miles away.” “I’ll be there tomorrow evening and see you Thursday.” “They’re kicking me out of here on Thursday. The insurance company won’t pay for any more physical therapy.” “Great. I’ll look after you at home. I’ll be there till Bob comes back.”

I can’t believe she’s doing it. She’s giving up ten days of her life to take care of me. I know she’s the perfect person because she’s a born nurturer and went through a similar accident herself. Still, I feel guilty about this enormous gesture. But, I’ll accept the sacrifice with a full heart.

Today, in the physical therapy room, I’m the only one in full makeup and I feel kind of conspicuous. But not so conspicuous that it stops me from answering makeup questions that come my way. By the time I leave PT, I’ve given a workshop on how to cover under-eye circles. I’m so buoyed that I go on a walk-about and tackle an incline that looked unconquerable to me a few days ago. But, today my trusty walker and I make it down and back. I feel like bragging but don’t because the other patients in PT are busy with their own challenges and I see so much hopelessness in their eyes.

Alone

2010-04-06T06:37:00.000-07:00

January 29 – February 2, 2010
Dear Diary:

The day I’ve been dreading has finally arrived. Everyone’s going to Scottsdale to our Global Sales Conference. To be precise, they’re going to the Fairmont Princess in Scottsdale – a place I love. To be completely precise, not everyone’s going to Scottsdale. George Clooney will be staying in Hollywood, but all those people I work with during the year are going, and that’s tragedy enough for me. Not only will I miss them but I will also miss seeing our distributors from over twenty different countries, our educators and all of our national sales force – combined about 130 people.

It’s been a major endeavor pulling this week-long conference together; making sure that the content is informative and inspirational and appeals to everyone from Malaysia to Milwaukee. We have a lot to catch up on since so much has happened since we were together two years ago. We’re calling this year’s conference Beauty in Balance which seems rather ironical to me since balance is not one of my strong suits at the moment. Come to think of it, neither is beauty.

Bob is packing up his things and telling me that he’s only a BlackBerry away. But before he goes he’s going to supervise my trip. Yes, I’m going on one, too. I’m going one floor down to Physical Therapy. The insurance company has determined that three days is enough pampering when they discover that I can get out of bed on my own. The gadget that makes this possible looks like a stiff lasso that I loop around my left foot and pull. Miraculously, the leg follows and, presto, I have two feet on the floor. This simple gadget has made the impossible possible and I intend to write to the inventor expressing my appreciation as soon as I can find out who it is.

So now, I’m able to sit smugly on the edge of my bed and with the aid of my trusty walker, I can raise myself to my full height and stand on my own two feet. I’ll never forget the first time this occurred. I straightened up my body and thought, This feels excellent. Watch out world! I don’t have any infant memories, but I bet I felt just like that when I pulled myself upright for the first time.

The insurance company has approved a week in Physical Therapy. They obviously think this is enough time for me to reach independence again. What the insurance company doesn’t know is that at the moment I can’t put one foot in front of the other – walker or no walker. My angels of mercy assure me that this will happen. I’m going to take them at their word.

Wheelchairs are very useful, especially when moving. It’s amazing what one can pile on them. I’m simply astonished at how much I’ve collected in less than a week considering that I came in with nothing. I refuse to leave my flowers behind, which complicates the move a trifle, but the trail of petals is pretty. With the help of willing nurses, who I’m going to miss almost as much as my husband, the caravan moves inexorably toward what has been described as the torture ward.

When Bob leaves that night, he tells me there will be a camera crew in on Tuesday to film me for the conference. The gala dinner and awards presentation is on Wednesday and they want to play the film as the evening begins. I realize that the game is up, and I let go of my resistance to this insane idea. I remind myself of the story I heard that was attributed to a Rabbi. He was listening to a woman who was bewailing a tragedy and lamenting that it happened to her. The Rabbi counseled her not to resist the tragedy but to lean into it. O.K. I’m leaning… it’s just that I have to go on camera and I don’t know how I’m going to wash my hair. I haven’t even seen a shower yet!

Pulling out all the stops with my hairdresser, he assures me that he will have someone there first thing Tuesday morning. Great! Now the most important thing has been settled, I guess I’d better write my short speech. Surprisingly, it comes very easily because it really does come from my heart. The only problem is that when I rehearse it, I can’t get through the final paragraph without sobbing. I don’t mean gentle Vivien Leigh tears rolling down my cheeks; I mean uncontrollable sobs. You know, the kind of emotion that is really, really embarrassing to everyone but especially to the one who’s sobbing. I consider rewriting the last paragraph and then decide to put it away and try again tomorrow because I’m probably over-tired with the move, already missing everyone and lonely without my familiar nurses. Time for the Venus Boots and some well-earned sleep.

The next morning, I try the last paragraph again. No better. Friends arrive with an assortment of clothes and makeup. I rehearse my speech in front of them. I see the shocked expressions on their faces as I dissolve yet again. Never mind, I have two days of physical therapy before the shoot. That should toughen me up. I make a pact with myself to work very hard and I do. Of course, I overdo it so much that even the therapists take pity on me. They turn their attention instead to teaching me how to dress myself and make a cup of tea. The latter, being essential to life, cheers me up to no end.

The morning of the shoot the phone rings early. “Hi, Jane, just checking to make sure you’re OK with your hair today.” My hairdresser is not coming. Pride won’t allow me to beg. “I’ll be fine, thanks.” What is it about hair that makes or breaks the way we feel about ourselves? I know bad skin can devastate self-esteem, but I once read a study that concluded that women would choose good hair over good skin. I found that really surprising at the time, but this morning, I’m convinced. Then, out of the haze, one of the nurses enters with a plastic chair on wheels and a hole in the seat. “I bet you’d like a shower,” she says. I’m so excited that I find a strength I don’t know I have; I grab the walker and stumble towards her. She pushes me down a long corridor – nurses say good morning, patients peep out of doorways, cleaners stop mopping. It feels like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest because, firstly, I must be crazy for even attempting to go on film today and, secondly, I know I probably look the worst I’ve ever looked in my life and I don’t care. There’s a shower in my future!

In the handicap bathroom, my savior hands me a sachet of fragrant liquid soap left behind by someone else. “Better than our soap,” she says. I wash my hair in it and it feels good – really good.

Blood

2010-03-23T07:08:00.000-07:00

January 28, 2010
Dear Diary:

Even given hospital routine, there seems to be an unusual number of people taking blood from my arm. They only have one to choose from because the other one is already taken. It’s siphoning off something from a bag way above my head. Just to increase the interest, the nurse who put in the original port placed it right in the crook of my elbow so every time I remotely bend my arm, such as scratching, it sets off an alarm bell which is only satisfied by a bustling body. To avoid giving the already over-worked staff so much trouble, I lie with my arm rigid and immobile. This matches my left leg.

I don’t concern myself with the numerous vials of blood until white coats enter the room with glum expressions on their faces. “You look very pale.” “No blush,” I say. “Are you always this pale?” “I haven’t looked at myself and I don’t want to. I’ve never gone this long without bronzer.” “We’re concerned about your blood levels.” “Oh!” “They’re dropping quite alarmingly.” “Oh.” “You’ll feel a lot better if we give you a transfusion.”

Transfusion! Arthur Ashe! Hepatitis! Rare blood disease! Someone else’s blood in my body!

“You know, the screening processes now are so thorough. There’s a one in a million chance of anything getting through.” I know that. We have the Blood Mobile come to our company. I’ve been through the screening process and in my view it was too thorough. However, I still don’t like the odds of one in a million. I’m finally convinced when I collapse trying to make it to the commode. Blood it is.

Not so fast. The insurance company has to approve it first. I wait breathlessly. Then finally, it’s a go. A nameless, faceless person somewhere in the ether has checked the box.

I expect the transfusion to be a half-hour job. In fact, it takes sixteen hours – eight hours for each bag. Whoever you are who donated two pints of A+ blood to Berkshire Medical Center, thank you because I do feel a lot better afterwards. That is until Bob repeats his idea of beaming me into the conference. YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS!

I double my efforts with my home-grown nutrition program, mixing together concoctions that baffle the nurses. They tend to congregate in my room to smell the flowers and to read the labels in my health food store. They assure me that it won’t be long before I can put one foot in front of the other again. I tentatively ask them that if I had to shoot some video, is there a space they could recommend. I tell them that I don’t want grey walls – something flesh toned. One suggests the chapel with the stained glass window behind me. Perhaps we should have organ music for some background ambience!

I don’t know how this crazy idea can possibly work. It certainly can’t be live because who knows what would happen. I mean, I might even cry. The only possibility is if it’s taped and edited to cut out any embarrassing bits. But how am I going to do my hair? My makeup? I can’t even sit in a chair yet. Oh, just forget the whole thing!

I lie in bed and look at the white/grey wall in front of me with its boxes of Latex gloves and the bulletin board with the daily schedule. My eyes drift right to take in the flower arrangements on the shelves by the door. I feel better. They lift my mood. And then, as if in a wave, I see all the spas I’ve visited over the years, all those caring people who work there, all the beautiful rooms, the fragrance, the candles, the music, and I understand in a way I’ve never understood before that this is what our bodies want and need. This is the way they heal surrounded by things that nurture our spirits, that make us feel more positive, that drive away negativity.

I begin to fantasize an experiment. What if this hospital, instead of putting Latex gloves and a bulletin board on the wall, showed a mural of a garden in full bloom or a beach with coconuts washing up on shore? I wonder if patients would heal faster and be released sooner. I bet the insurance companies would love that. I bet they’d even pay for the murals.

Wait, here comes that familiar sound. “Just checking your vitals. Which is your bad leg?” I start to answer and catch myself. “It isn’t my bad leg; it’s my injured leg. And soon it’s going to be running a mile again – in high heels.”

E.R.

2010-03-08T09:49:00.000-08:00

January 24, 2010
Dear Diary:

As my stretcher is rolled into the emergency waiting area, it’s clear that it’s a busy night. Our small quiet country hospital has been transformed into what looks like a frantic scene from a television pilot – Black Ice Blues. Amid the chaos, I have absolutely no recollection of losing my exercise clothes for a hospital gown and so the anticipated embarrassment of being caught wearing no underwear is a non-event. See, mum, I told you that you worry too much.

And I still don’t really know what the injury is. I know I’ve broken something but what? The x-rays are withheld from me partly because the pain killers have left me so out of it that I couldn’t make a decision anyway and partly because I don’t want to see them. Eventually, I’m told that I’ve shattered my femur and that I’m to be transferred to another hospital for surgery the next morning. The sooner one repairs this kind of break, the better the result one can expect – expert that I am. (It’s six weeks before I eventually see the x-rays and understand what I really did to myself. I wish I’d never known.)

The 45-minute journey by ambulance to the next hospital ends with a bout of motion sickness performed for the amusement of the milling throng in the waiting room. It’s amazing how fast those little pink trays appear.

The next morning while I’m answering some e-mails, a delegation enters to tell me that surgery will be at 2:00 pm. I feel remarkably calm and I can’t understand why. All the things I’ve dreaded for so long – serious injury, major surgery, anesthesia, drugs, confinement, loss of independence – should conspire to render me a nervous wreck… but I’m not. I feel calm and lucid with a sense of acceptance that surprises me. Let’s just get this done.

An interesting conversation with the anesthesiologist completes my morning. He lays out some choices for me – general anesthesia or epidural. Actually, I’m the one who asks about the epidural. “We could do that,” he says, “but there’ll be a lot of sawing and drilling going on and you’ll be lying on a stainless steel table for three hours which isn’t that comfortable.” “Give me the general. I’ll live with the consequences.” As I’m wheeled into surgery, he puts a mask over my face and says, “Just some oxygen.” You can’t fool me! In my last act of independence, I take the mask off my face and say: “This isn’t oxygen.”

And that’s it – gone. Then, “Jane! Jane! Jane! Wake-up!” It’s over. I have 16” of titanium and four bolts holding my femur together. Actually, that isn’t all but I don’t know about that yet.

The surgeon reports an excellent result and that he expects full recovery. I suppose I should be enormously relieved to hear this, but honestly it didn’t occur to me that there wouldn’t be full recovery. Perhaps if it had, I wouldn’t have been so calm.

Since hospital routine is new to me, I’m quite impressed by the number of people who are in and out of my room wheeling in all kinds of contraptions. “Just getting some blood.” “Just getting blood pressure and temperature.” “Did you fill out the menu for meal service?” “Bed pan or commode?” “Give me the one where I don’t have to move.” “You have to move. The sooner you move, the faster you’ll heal.” At the moment moving seems like such a remote possibility that I just lie back and listen to the Code Blue announcements. Wait; here comes someone else, “Just checking your dressings.” On go another pair of Latex gloves – the eleventh pair this afternoon that have been removed from the dispenser on the wall opposite me. It’s unfathomable how many gloves a hospital must use every day. Do they get recycled? Do they biodegrade? I make a note to find out when I’m back in the real world.

And then in comes the first floral arrangement. Its beauty against the starkness of the hospital room quite overwhelms me. I lie staring at it marveling at the shapes, colors and delicacy of this fragrant visitor. I feel my spirits rising. I will get over this. And then Bob arrives with my supplements and grocery order. He stacks packages around the room – hemp milk, almonds, sprouted soy, raisins, cooked salmon, home-made soup, probiotics, colostrom, omega-3 capsules. So much stuff that the nurses wheel in another table for me. It isn’t long before my room looks like a cross between a florist and a health food store.

The beauty of the flowers, the touching messages, the sense of taking charge of my healing help me to face what I know has to come next. Everyone’s leaving to go to the conference and I’m not. My whole support team is going to be two thousand miles away hosting our national sales team, our international distributors and our world-wide educators. I can’t bring myself to think about it. One hurdle at a time. Let’s conquer the commode first.

Before Bob leaves for the night, he mentions something about videoing me into the conference. I dismiss the idea as ludicrous. No one’s going to see me like this.

I’m not alone that night. I have unexpected companions called Venus Boots. These white cuffs wrap around my lower legs and vibrate up and down them all night long. This electronic massage is designed to lessen the risk of blood clots. (Another wonderful gadget.) I don’t just feel massage though, I feel something else from the Venus Boots; I feel less alone. With every cupping and uncupping of my legs, I hear Venus saying, “It’s OK. I’ve got you.” When I tell the nurse the next morning that I’m so enchanted by my night visitors that I’ve dubbed them angel hands, she gives me one of those looks that says: Let me know if you’re still saying that a week from now.

So the journey begins. Tomorrow, I learn how to make my bed go up and down.

Black Ice

2010-02-22T14:37:00.000-08:00

January 24, 2010
Dear Diary:

I’ve been lying in the driveway now for about twenty minutes. The soft mist is still falling and freezing as it touches the ground. Around me is darkness punctuated by a few lights. I can see the cars going by on Main Street just a block away. Life oblivious to my cries of: “No! No! This can’t be happening! Help! Someone please help! Bob! Bob!” I don’t expect any response – there’s no one around on Sunday evening at five o’clock with the football play-offs in full swing – but I can’t lie here doing nothing.

I was just going to do my workout but first I’d thrown on a ski jacket over my shorts and t-shirt to pop over to see my mother before she went to bed. I’d been in and out of that door all day but in classic New England capricious weather in one hour the ground had transformed from harmless mush to lethal black ice. For those of you who’ve never experienced it, it’s the element most feared in our neck of the woods – more so than six feet of snow or our occasional tornados. It's the invisible, uncaring enemy that spins unsuspecting cars off the road, turns familiar walk ways to booby traps and fills our hospital emergency rooms. It’s the thing we warn each other about and the thing that always ends up surprising us.

Tonight, I’m lying six feet from where my first foot touched the top of the mound. The speed with which it happened amazes me. So much so that I have the notion that it would be easy to turn back the clock just that nano-second and life would be the way I had it planned. Say goodnight to mum; do my work-out; warm up the lamb shanks from last night and have some down time with Bob over a glass of pinot noir. Tomorrow begins the count-down to one of the most important events of our year – our Global Sales Conference starting in Scottsdale a week from today. People are coming from all over the world. It’s been a year in the planning.

No! No! This can’t be happening!

Part of my brain is marveling at the experience. Yes, it took less than a second but there was another dimension, as well – the “time stood still” dimension – that moment when I left the ground and waited to return transcended time. Waiting, waiting for the eventual impact. When it happened it shot my spirit out of my body so that I was looking down on myself and moving farther and farther away until the physical part of me became a tiny, insignificant spot railing against the universe. I looked ridiculous in the immensity of it all.

Well, I can’t lie here forever. A girl could freeze to death. I’ve got to roll over and get to the back door somehow. Hold my breath – roll. Made it. Now start moving. How?

“Are you all right?” The wicked part of my brain wants to say, “Oh, I’m fine thanks. Just testing out this new yoga position.” The practical part of me says to Cody, my 15 year-old savior: “Would you run up those stairs and tell my husband I’ve broken my leg?” Seconds later, the door flies open, Bob flies down the walk-way and slides on the same ice. He careens towards me. I think it’s funny.

Cody, brilliantly, pulls a phone from his pocket and dials 911. Clearly, he wants to save us from ourselves as fast as possible.

The police are the first to arrive and stand guard waiting for the ambulance. Here it comes reversing down the driveway. I hope they know where I am!

I’m suddenly overcome with a sense of relief and gratitude that’s hard to contain. I think of Haiti and those people still waiting for attention from exhausted doctors. I can’t envision such courage, such suffering. I count the people who have surrounded me in minutes – seven – all trained and all with one thing in mind. But right now I don’t want anyone to touch me. I’m holding my leg together with my left hand that has transformed itself into a vice and refuses to let go. Please don’t move me, just leave me here; I’ll be all right tomorrow.

But they have this wonderful gadget that’s a stretcher in two parts. One part slides under my left side and the other under my right. The medics push gently and the two sides lock into each other. Whoever thought of that should be in the Gadget Hall of Fame. A gentle lift and I’m slid into the back of the ambulance. It’s then I remember that I have no underwear on under my shorts and t-shirt, but I did give myself a pedicure yesterday and that’s really all that matters.

It’s a short trip to the hospital but one that represents the beginning of a new chapter, the beginning of a new experience, the opportunity to find out more about myself. This is going to be interesting.

Tradition!

2009-12-15T07:22:00.000-08:00

The tradition of the evergreen tree can be traced back to the Ancient Egyptians. Centuries ago in Great Britain, Druids used evergreens at winter solstice to symbolize the return of life in the Spring.

Bob and I have two traditions that without fail we adhere to on Christmas Eve.

Someone once said that the English love tradition and Americans love a parade. Bob gets his parade at Thanksgiving; now it’s my turn to enjoy some tradition. That’s why I’m insisting this year on verbalizing, “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays.” Chanukah’s almost over, after all, and Christmas isn’t. Besides, I’m really OK about it if someone wishes me a Happy Chanukah in response – even delighted.

Sharing holidays with each other should become a new tradition.

I digress. The first tradition Bob and I observe on Christmas Eve is to join friends in a tiny church on a hill surrounded by woods. It only gets used once in winter and Christmas Eve is it. It couldn’t be more picture-post-card if it tried – complete with a potbellied stove to keep us warm and red candles in red apples at the windows.

Snow is usually falling outside.

The service consists of adults and children sharing something special from their lives, a favorite poem, an observation, anything really that contributes to the sense of community. There are some carols and then we all light candles, link hands and sing Silent Night.

You have to be dead not to be wiping away a tear.

The service is followed by a party at my friend Bobbie’s house – and yes, we sing carols around the piano. I suppose this is a chance to tell her that all the effort she makes with food, decorations and seasonal cheer is and has been appreciated by all her friends for many years. For me, she recaptured the magic of Christmas that I knew as a child and I will always treasure it.

Everyone leaves feeling closer and happier than when we went in which I think is the point.

Then Bob and I rush home and do some last-minute gift wrapping and tease ourselves by delaying the moment that we find the DVD and put it in the machine. Because this is what we’ve been looking forward to all year. We wouldn’t dream of spoiling things by being tempted to play this sacred DVD any other time.

We cuddle up, yes, even at our age we cuddle up – our dog is invited, of course – and we push the play button. We’ve done this every year since 2003 when Love Actually was first released. We laugh, cry, comment on the brilliant writing and ensemble acting and hope that it won’t end. It does, of course. It ends with the words “… because love, actually, is all around.”

So in an act of pure plagiarism, that’s what I wish for all of us this holiday season. I wish that we can all experience, in spite of what we read, see and even sometimes feel, that love, actually, is all around.

What's in a Word?

2009-11-30T08:48:00.000-08:00

I love thinking about words. From Dan Brown’s latest great read, The Lost Symbol, I’ve just learned about how the word sincerely is thought to have come into the language. When marble workers during the Roman Republic wanted to cover an imperfection, they would fill it with wax and press marble dust into it. The mistake disappeared. This was considered dishonest.

In Latin, sine means without; cere means wax. So sincerely means without wax. Every time you sign a letter with Sincerely or Yours sincerely, you’re really saying “this letter is written honestly -- without wax.” Isn’t that wonderful?! I love stuff like that.

English is so alive and organic. It’s not easy to keep up with it all. Just think, ten years ago no one would have understood the verb to google. As recently as a year ago, no one would have understood the verb to tweet.

It’s especially not easy to keep up with the changes in English when one has to learn American as well. As a born and bred English person, I work hard at being bilingual. For example, in stead of saying turn right I now say take a right without even thinking of asking “take a right where and in what?” I’ve even mastered hang a left without being tempted to look for a clothes line.

But there are some words that I still can’t get my tongue around, for example, utilize. It’s three syllables after all. It’s a lot of work! I’m going to stick with its more efficient cousin use because otherwise the utilization of utilize takes way too much breath and sounds as if I’m trying to be something I’m not.

And how about the word robust? This fine word used to be savored about once a year to describe a hearty red wine at the holidays. Now it’s used, with the appropriate hand-speak, to describe anything from an idea to a budget. I like the word robust; it feels good in the mouth which may be why it’s become the word of the moment. But it’s on the way to losing its power from over utilization. I’ve had complaints from other words who are beginning to feel neglected.

However, not all is lost, because in the cosmetic world we have a language that doesn’t go in and out of fashion but remains the same whether you’re in New Zealand or Norway and anywhere in between. It’s called INCI (International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients). The majority of ingredient labels use INCI. This doesn’t mean you’ll be able to understand it because most of it will be in Latin -- that universal language with which we’re all so conversant.

The United States doesn’t require this international language, although almost every other country does. So, if you ship overseas, this has led to some interesting problems for us manufacturers not the least of which is the word water.

Yes, water. This two syllable word that heads many ingredient lists has been the subject of more meetings, more angst, more high-level discussion than any ingredient anywhere on earth. The Latin word for water is aqua. However, the FDA feels that not enough Americans know what aqua means so they want water to be called water, which would give us water/aqua on our labels.

Not so fast. To comply internationally, manufacturers must list the INCI word first which gives us aqua/water (with the FDA looking on with robust disapproval). Then the French weigh in and insist that if French translations are used on the package (an absolute requirement if you ship to Canada) that everything in English must be translated into French. This leaves us with Aqua/Water/Eau on our labels, that are already griping about all the information they have to carry.

And you thought being a cosmetic manufacture just meant deciding which new lipstick colors to bring out.

Well, that’s it for now. I’m going to grab a shower (round the waist), fix my hair (I’ve just found a fabulous new glue), and take in a movie (I’m tired of watching them. It’s more exciting to inhale them). After that, I’ll probably become a couch potato and catch a few zzzz’s (in my butterfly net) because I’ve been working 24/7!

Memory and Your Nose

2009-10-27T10:59:00.000-07:00

Ceilidh, front center, with her focus group

Mmmm! Just the whiff of Old Spice Aftershave and I’m back dancing on the top of a table to the Beatles’ She Loves Me and spotting a mysterious stranger soon to be my first love.

Or the smell of wet grass and I’m poking my head out of our family tent wondering if it’s dry enough to forage for mushrooms.

What is it about a smell that in a nano-second vividly recalls memories decades old and with all the attendant emotions? No other sense packs such a punch because it’s the only sense that goes directly to the brain. At the top of our nasal passages behind our nose is a patch of special neurons about the size of a postage stamp. These neurons are unique because they’re out in the open where they can come into contact with the air. Humans have about five million neurons. Dogs have more than 220 million.

My dog thinks that humans have a puny sense of smell. Her smell is a thousand times more sensitive than ours. Could you smell a stick of celery through the walls of a closed suitcase surrounded by dirty socks? And medical tests have recently shown that specially trained dogs can detect certain types of tumors in humans. Beat that!

In order for you to smell something, molecules from that thing have to make it to your nose. Everything you smell, therefore, is giving off molecules - whether it’s aftershave, celery or wet grass. Those molecules are generally light and float through the air into your nose. Inert substances such as minerals don’t give off molecules which is why they are “fragrance free.”

Humans can distinguish more than 10,000 different smells. My dog isn’t impressed. She can smell the urine of another of her brethren and tell you the sex and what it ate for breakfast. She does this quite often. “Hey, let’s go this way. He’s a nice looking stud and there’s a chance he didn’t eat all the sirloin they gave him for breakfast!”

Regardless of our limitations, smell is incredibly important to us. What’s the first thing you do when you’re assessing a new cosmetic? I bet you put it on your hand and smell it. If it doesn’t appeal, it doesn’t matter what miracles the cream could produce, you won’t use it; I know you.

So wait until you try our special holiday product, . Four beautiful lip glosses with my favorite chocolate flavors - truffle, orange, strawberry and caramel. Yes, they really taste like chocolate and just as importantly…they smell like it. That’s because we’ve used organic food-grade flavors. From the moment you open the box all your senses are stimulated and when you put them on your lips, I promise you a truly sensual experience.

As soon as I open the lid to and release the smell, I’m opening the door to my first Belgian chocolatier and swooning from the aroma - real cocoa beans and butter fat, no compromises just pure decadence.

Unfortunately, chocolate is poisonous for dogs so in spite of pulling out the big guns - tail waving rhythmically, the “see what a good girl I am sitting here in front of you and not moving an inch,” posture and moist eyes fixing mine, I’m hanging tough and keeping these delectable goodies for myself. Pass the chocolate orange, please.

Anyone Can Wear Red

2009-09-29T06:44:00.000-07:00

Jane on the ocean floor

Sand Pipers in flight

I think I’m in love with iron oxides.

I used to be in love with the man who introduced me to them, my geology professor at NYU. It was he who unlocked the mystery of tectonic plates for his devoted students and led us to marvel further at the wonders of this planet. I used to leave his class and dance up Fifth Avenue. He gave me an A on my first test and then I knew it was for real. I have a terrible memory for names but I never forgot the names he taught us – metamorphic, sedimentary, igneous, gneiss, conglomerate, obsidian, scoria.… And he informed us that anything red in the earth is the result of iron oxides.

This lapse into the dull was unlike him. What’s so fascinating about rusted iron liberally sprinkled with heavy metals? Give me underwater volcanoes any day.

But then I saw a dramatic demonstration of the beauty of this simple mineral when, years ago, I was on a rafting trip through the Grand Canyon. The river was green when we first began to run the rapids but as the week wore on the weather changed from dry to saturating. This created a certain amount of discomfort for a city girl who was trying not to whine about spending the night on beaches with nothing but a sleeping bag and ground sheet. Good that the ground sheet was transparent because I used to pull it over me and watch the lightening flash off the canyon walls while the rain beat on my face. (Why didn’t you sleep under a tree, you ask? That’s because scorpions drop from trees, and then there are other beasts that were using the beach first who also like to stay out of the rain. Ignore my warning at your peril.)

It rained for so long that waterfalls that didn’t exist before poured over the red canyon walls washing off the iron oxides into the river which turned from green to red in front of our eyes. When we reached the Little Colorado River, its aquamarine water joined the red Colorado in a kaleidoscope of colors that defy description. I was hooked.

Just recently I had a trip to the Bay of Fundy, that wondrous place in Nova Scotia that enjoys fifty-foot tides and is so full of iron oxides that even the massive cliffs are red. We stayed at a motel on the shore of the Minas Basin and watched as the tide came in and the tide went out. When it was in, it lapped at our feet; out, it disappeared over the horizon. What was left were miles of red mud – the ocean floor – with a rich mixture of small critters for the thousands of migrating sand pipers to fatten up on before their long trip south. (More on that later.) There is something primeval about walking on mud millions of years old as it squelches between your toes and slips and slides under your feet. And the iron oxides stain your toes and prolong your pedicure.

In the evening, we cooked up vegetables from the local farmers’ market, grilled some just-caught fish and ate at a picnic table watching the sun set. Why am I giving you this piece of off-topic information? Because the sunset intensified the color of the red mud so that it looked as though it were boiling. It looked like lava. Really, it did. Iron oxides have never looked so beautiful.

And the thousands of sand pipers used this beauty as a back-drop to their ancient dance that left us breathless. Do they have a choreographer? How is it that they can all turn at the same exact second going 35 miles an hour? One instant they’re a silver flying saucer; the next second they’re a black funnel, and the next they disappear altogether only to reappear as Japanese calligraphy. I’d be watching them still if I hadn’t had a plane to catch and they hadn’t left for South America.

I brought some red iron oxide back on my brand-new white tennis sneakers and was quite annoyed at how impossible it is to get off once it’s made its mark. (If only lip stains worked as well!) In spite of this minor character flaw, I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m still in love with iron oxides. But what really breaks my heart is how much I love this glorious planet.

Note: To learn more about the ocean floor, the creatures that inhabit it and how a healthy ocean is crucial for all life on earth, visit http://www.teamorca.org/.

A Different Perspective

2009-09-22T09:23:00.000-07:00

Jane on the left...hanging on!

Isn’t it wonderful when something happens out of the blue that just blows you away?! Literally.

Last week our management team held a retreat so we could concentrate on thinking ahead for the next five years. On the final day we were told to bring warm clothes and soft-soled shoes. I thought we were going for a hike – you know, an orchestrated bonding experience. Instead, we were marched to a meadow where two hot air balloons were waiting for us.

I’ve never been in a hot air balloon.

It was a perfect evening to see our beautiful Berkshire Hills in all their late summer glory. At least, that’s what I repeated to myself as the balloons were inflated and my knees shook. Did I tell you I’m a nervous flier? I’ve been in all kinds of planes from two-seaters over the African jungle to jumbo jets around the world. I’ve even been in a glider. I’ve sat in 747 cockpits with jet pilots while they expressed their adoration for all those dials. I’ve taken the joystick of a two-seater in an effort by the pilot to have me “feel her soul.” I’ve read all the books and I understand why planes stay up there. As a friend of mine says, “Planes fly because of the laws of physics, not in spite of them.”

Nothing’s worked. I still experience at least one moment of abject terror every time I fly and that’s if there are no bumps. It comes down to this - I just don’t trust those engines and I don’t like knowing that I’m 30,000 feet in the air with no way out. (I always choose an aisle seat because looking down reminds me that we’re not on the ground.)

So, riding in a hot air balloon powered by a propane flame thrower, with a pilot dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt and being told that it would be better if my partner and I didn’t travel in the same balloon together wasn’t my idea of must-have recreation no matter how glorious the early evening light was!

And then we had to sign those releases. You know, the ones that tell you that you can’t hold the pilot responsible if you impale on a church steeple or the balloon goes up in flames. I made light of it, of course, because everyone else was being so carefree and also because I knew they were watching me. Gaily, I jumped into the basket and fell into deep prayer wishing I’d taken a seasick pill.

It makes a lot of noise when they pump that blow torch to keep the air in the balloon warmer than the ambient temperature. “Heat rises, cold sinks” became my mantra as we floated gently away. When the blow torch wasn’t in operation and singeing the top of my head, things were blissfully quiet and serene. The hills revealed their secrets, unfathomable from the ground. We discovered grand houses tucked into hillsides; formal gardens; lakes and ponds. We floated over trees so close we picked leaves from their very top branches. We looked for bear and deer in usually impenetrable woodland.

Our beautiful Berkshires Hills – the roots of mountains that used to be higher than the Rockies – spread out all around us in a shimmering blue light. Yes, this was worth it. This was actually fun.

Oh, I forgot to tell you that balloons can be made to go up and down but not sideways, so when I asked the pilot, “Where are we going to land?” His answer was, “I haven’t got a clue.” He did reveal that he planned to fly over the upcoming ridge. A slightly frantic, I thought, pumping of the Bunsen burner gave us enough lift to float over the ridge with not much to spare. And we did bump into our sister balloon as they got caught up in an air current that drove them backwards and into us. We have handprints on our balloon to prove it.

It eventually occurred to me that perhaps we were running out of propane since we had switched to the second tank and there’d been quite a bit of flame pumping going on. Sure enough our pilot started to make noises about looking for a field. In case he missed them, we were happy to help and pointed to several large, green, soft spaces close at hand. Remember I said that a balloon can’t go sideways? This is when I fully appreciated the phrase, “So near and yet so far,” as we had to leave a number of tantalizingly close meadows behind.

I have no sense of direction so trying to figure out where we were was impossible and everything looks so different from a hot air balloon. However, I did know that we were dangerously close to heading for the State of New York and hundreds of acres of dense woodland. But those puckish air currents just wouldn’t cooperate. Then, suddenly we were headed for a lush alfalfa field – the last green space before we hit NY. We were instructed to bend our knees and hold on tight. No problem. We bounced a few times and were down, exhilarated, congratulating each other and talking about when we could do it again. Now here comes the good part.

This unpredictable, uncontrollable balloon had landed in a field next to the house where I started the company fifteen years ago! It’s true. (My neighbors came running out to welcome us.) I know this sounds ridiculous, but it’s almost as if the balloon had deliberately taken us back to the beginning to show us how far we’d come. Lots of hugs and tears.

Our fifteen years since we started the company have been a soaring balloon ride with risk, unpredictability, adventure and quite a bit of hot air thrown in. But more than anything else it has been a ride full of beauty and discovery and connection.

Who needs to go sideways when you can go up?

We Are What We Eat

2009-08-31T10:24:00.000-07:00

We rescued our dog, Benjie, five years ago now. He was found on the streets of a nearby-town, so matted that he couldn’t defecate. He became completely devoted to my mother and her to him - he was soon living with her. Their mutual devotion manifested itself in many ways but particularly with food.

I’ve long been an advocate of the raw food diet for our dogs. I know it saved my beloved Labrador’s life. I thought I was feeding her the best pet food money could buy but when she was one year old she developed a terrible allergy that was so agonizing it even changed her personality. After many, many vet visits, I finally found wonderful Pat McKay*, who diagnosed Ceilidh (kay-lee) as having an out-of-control yeast infection fed by all the starch in her food. Under Pat’s guidance, we stopped the vicious cycle of steroids and antibiotics and built up Ceilidh’s immune system with supplements and raw food. Soon the constant scratching and itching stopped; her ears that looked like red cracked mud went back to their beautiful creamy softness; her hair re-grew (she was almost hairless) and most importantly the yeast let go of its grip on her internal system.

I learned that pet food is full of starch and processed food, completely alien to a dog’s natural diet, but the favorite of yeast and parasites. Nobody bakes cookies for dogs in the wild.

So our habit for the past 11 years is for her to lie beside me in the kitchen while I spend ten minutes in the morning putting together a mixture of raw meat mixed with organic vegetables and vitamins. What takes me ten minutes, takes her ten seconds to eat. This diet is more expensive than commercial dog food but, believe me, the vet bills have shrunk to nothing. Better yet, she’s almost 12 and still leads the pack of her Labrador buddies on the daily walk together. She’s a running, jumping anti-aging commercial.

Benjie (our little rescue) has been more of a problem. He has been so lavished with treats and nibbles to “make up for the terrible time he had on the streets, dear” – a regular rationalization from my mother - that he grew obese and lethargic. (He’s a terrier mix so lethargy is unusual, but he has this adorable way of sitting on his hind legs and lifting his front paws up and down as if he were saying, “please, please, please!” Even I, with my purist heart, find it difficult to resist him – but I do.) So, eventually we took him to the vet for a check-up to find that he has diabetes.

My initial reaction was, “Oh, no! How on earth are we going to manage this? Two insulin shots a day after meals 12 hours apart.” It’s still a major challenge but there’s no doubt that his energy is better and he’s a happier dog – always good to see. In order for me to give him the insulin, he has to eat a certain amount of raw food twice a day – no treats! This took an enormous concession on my mother’s part who is convinced that Benjie thinks that she doesn’t love him any more. That hasn’t been my problem. My problem has been getting him to eat my raw food. I have to hand-feed him to get anything passed his lips because he would much rather have a piece of toast – preferably with marmalade. I’ve come to realize that he’s addicted to starch. He literally had the shakes one night. This addiction means that I can spend up to 45 minutes a session getting enough food into him in order to give him the insulin. There have, of course, been many trips to the vet to monitor blood sugar levels. Now he has a urinary tract infection – common with diabetes, I’m told.

All this, of course, has led me to think in the larger terms of what diabetes means to humans and the strain on the country and the world of this epidemic. There’s nothing like having it in your own backyard to get a real sense of how complicated, dangerous and time-consuming this disease is. Apart from those truly unfortunate people who become diabetic at an early age (Type 1 diabetes), so much of diabetes is avoidable. Benjie didn’t have to be diabetic; it was the result of those around him not understanding the consequences of what seemed like small, harmless actions – expressions of love – like the mailperson who used to slip him a biscuit every day. From Benjie’s point of view, I suppose the moral to this story is that looking cute and getting what you want, isn’t always best for your health.

*http://www.patmckay.com/ Pat gives free consultations on any aspect of your companion’s health. She also offers homeopathy for animals.

My First Wrinkle

2009-07-20T12:13:00.000-07:00

I vividly remember my first wrinkle. I was in Austria getting ready to go out to dinner after a day of filming Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger. I was kind of excited about some time away from the grind of a film set and really looking forward to getting to know our Austrian producer/Olympic athlete who was taking me to a local restaurant.

I was putting on some mascara when I noticed what I thought was a smudge under my eye. I casually flicked it away – it didn’t move. I flicked again and again and peered closer. Why was it being so stubborn? It took a few seconds and then the shocking realization: I had a wrinkle and it wasn’t going anywhere but deeper.

It somewhat took the edge off the evening because now, of course, I was an old woman and invisible to men. (I’ve grown up a bit since then.)

The worst part of the appearance of this creature was that there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing except anticipate the appearance of more of the same. Today, I would have run for a cosmeceutical – that wonderful hybrid of cosmetic and drug – that would have promised an increase in collagen and elastin production and vanished my wrinkle. But, cosmeceuticals didn’t exist then.

Aren’t we fortunate to live in an age when science has made it possible to have skincare products that are actually effective? What isn’t so fortunate are the restrictions on what manufacturers can say about them. Even though the products work, they aren’t allowed to say so for fear of upsetting the FDA by making drug claims. To understand what the FDA defines as a cosmetic, this is taken from its Web site.

The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) defines cosmetics by their intended use, as "articles intended to be rubbed, poured, sprinkled, or sprayed on, introduced into, or otherwise applied to the human body...for cleansing, beautifying, promoting attractiveness, or altering the appearance"

In other words, it can look pretty but can’t claim to effect physiological change.

This is the FDA definition of a drug:

The FD&C Act defines drugs, in part, by their intended use, as "articles intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease" and "articles (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals"

In other words, if you claim that the product creates physiological change then it’s a drug. So if you say, “our product prevents wrinkles,” you are making a drug claim. If you say, “our product prevents the appearance of wrinkles,” you are making a cosmetic claim. A cosmetic manufacturer does not want to be marketing a drug, even though some of us have to endure the strictures if we produce sunscreens. So we try to say what the product does without really saying it. This is why we hedge our statements with words such as “appears,” “seems” “illusion” and “looks” and leave the consumer to try to figure it out.

I hope there will come a day when companies who have done their research, gone through their testing phases and documented the results are allowed to let the consumer know what the product can really do. Anything else is not only a disservice to the consumer but also to the well-intentioned scientists, chemists and formulators who are trying to give us what we want.

2009-06-22T07:46:00.000-07:00

Jane’s mum assembling Magic Mitts with tender loving care.

I’ve written about vitamin D before and I feel that it’s worth writing about it again. More and more studies are showing what a major part it plays in our health. Consider this, if we have enough vitamin D in our system, it acts as a much more efficient deterrent to the flu than questionable vaccinations. For example, research has shown that infections peak when vitamin D levels are at their lowest – usually March and April – and infections are lowest during the months when vitamin D levels peak because of our exposure to the sun.

Dr. David G. Williams in his newsletter “Alternatives for the Health-Conscious Individual” cites studies that suggest that this “seasonality” associated with flu can be abolished by supplementing the diet with just an additional 2,000 IU of vitamin D per day. For someone without the flu, the following are the recommended daily doses:

1,000 IU for children under two years old
2,000 IU for children over two years old
3,000 IU for individuals weighing 80 – 130 lbs.
4,000 IU for individuals weighing 130 – 170 lbs.
5,000 IU for individuals weighing over 170 lbs.

For an adult who contracts the flu, the dosage can be increased to 50,000 IU for three days and then reduced back to the above dosage.

Concerned about overdoing it? Studies have shown that taking 50,000 IU of vitamin D a day for six weeks resulted in no signs of toxicity whatsoever.

Why does vitamin D work? It is crucial in fighting infections and keeping our immune systems strong. Vitamin D is an essential element in producing NK (natural killer) cells. These killer cells are our first line of defense against invading pathogens. If you’d like more in-depth information on this please refer to Dr. Williams Web site, http://www.drdavidwilliams.com/.

I started taking vitamin D in larger doses at the beginning of the winter and I can honestly say that I’ve gone through it without so much as a sniffle which says a lot given that my dog’s desire for walkies increases as the temperature reaches sub-zero. This can be any time of the day or night. I take 50,000 IU twice a month in one convenient little pill, http://www.lifespannutrition.com/, and now I’m giving it to my mum because I know it’s going to help her bones, as well. I’m doing this even though I know it’s going to increase her killer cells and she definitely doesn’t need any more of those. Believe me, she has plenty!

2009-05-26T06:57:00.000-07:00

I read with some amazement in the Spring issue of Cosmetics International that a study run by the University of St. Etienne in France and backed by L’Oreal, found that older women who put on makeup in the morning are less likely to have accidents than those who have the bare-faced cheek to venture outside without wearing cosmetics.

The study included one hundred women aged 65-85 and found that those wearing makeup stood straighter and were more stable on their feet. Researchers believe that applying makeup could serve as a form of stretching exercise, improving balance and coordination. So let it be said with emphasis that you’re never too old to wear makeup especially if you don’t want to end up on a walker.

And there’s more interesting news flowing in from Japan by way of cosmeticsdesign.com. (Those Japanese scientists are really busy with all kinds of studies to do with skin and health.) This time they’ve discovered, by using brain scanning equipment, that women experience a wave of euphoria and optimism as they prepare for their makeup routine. Isn’t that interesting! So, it isn’t just about feeling good after we’ve put on our makeup, we feel good before. Just imagining how we’re going to look sends us into paroxysms of joy.

The optimism bit was interesting. Perhaps makeup is all we need to turn the economy around. More female bankers, please!

2009-05-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

I was gifted with a book recently called The Essential Green You! – Easy ways to detox your diet, your body, and your life written by Deirdre Imus. The book begins with an African proverb which says: If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try sleeping in a room with a mosquito.

I wish we could eat, sleep and dream this sentiment. I wish that every time anyone threw anything away he/she thought about where it was going and what it was doing to us and the environment. I wish that every time we fed something to our children or pets we thought about its effect on their health and the larger consequences. I wish that every time we used a product – personal or household – we read the label to see what the toxicity was. I wish that every time we were tempted to say something mean or condescending we thought about its impact. I wish we all understood that we really can do something to improve our health, our future, our country and the planet by being conscious of the power we have.

Deirdre’s book is the clear result of someone who’s conscious of her power and how to use it. From what we eat to what we put on our bodies to what we wear, she points out the positive and negative impact of the multiple choices we make all the time and without thinking.

And she puts her money where her convictions are. For example, The Deirdre Imus Environmental Center for Pediatric Oncology. The mission is to enhance health by educating our children, their parents and the public-at-large about the carcinogens and other environmental factors that occur all too commonly in our lives. For example, do you know what cleaning products your child’s school uses? The Center wants to be a voice that can realistically help shape policy decisions that impact the environment and our well being.

Like a mosquito in your bedroom, Deidre is hard to ignore. Except, instead of wanting to swat her, you’re going to want to read and hear every word she says.

Spring

2009-04-27T07:30:00.000-07:00

There’s no doubt about it, spring is my favorite season. Legend has it that the day I was born (at home) my grandmother wrapped me in a blanket and took me into the garden to look at the pear blossoms. I think that’s called imprinting.

Every year since, I experience a feeling of euphoria as I see life returning. It’s worth going through the winter to see spirited little flowers lifting their heads while the rest of us are still wearing boots and scarves. It’s been a cold, damp spring so far but here they come, the early spring flowers, cheering us up with their brilliance.

The person who related the seasons to the human color palette was so right. Just look around you and see what spring has to offer – clear yellows, aqua blues, peach and bright greens – all colors that flatter yellow-undertoned spring women and men. And then summer with its dusty blues, mauves, pinks, blue reds and sage greens, perfect for cool undertones. Fall takes the spring colors and deepens them into golds, burnt oranges, rich blues and greens. Winter around here is famous for its white off-set with dark tree trunks. Truly, winter people are the only ones who are flattered by black or white. They wear it – for the rest, it wears us.

I know having your colors done is considered old fashioned now but I am still a firm believer in it. It works. It really does. And it works just as well for makeup as for clothing.

Funny that I was born in the spring, love the spring and, in the season color system, I’m a spring. Oh, yes, I’d sometimes love to be one of those women whose wardrobe is nothing but black with some crisp white blouses (travelling is a breeze) but the truth is that my skin looks better wearing a yellow-undertoned color next to it. And if I try to wear anything but a warm or neutral color on my lips, I look as if I’m ready for the morgue.

We have a nest of pine siskin’s on our porch. Mamma has produced five babies – something that she and her mate marvel at quite a bit as they perch on the side of the nest for a breather. As the babies poke up their heads, all I can see are their bright yellow beaks, the same color as my daffodils. Isn’t nature amazing?!

For all of you springs out there, enjoy your season.

2009-04-13T11:24:00.000-07:00

I love fish. I like to look at them in aquariums; I like to swim with them, and I enjoy them on my plate. Poaching a sea bass with ginger and shiitake mushrooms is a sublime experience. Oh, yes, and I love sushi!

It probably has roots in my childhood when we would fish in the English Channel behind the chalet my parents rented for two weeks on the Isle of White. We always rented the chalet called Mine and ‘Ers right next to the one called ‘Ers and Mine. The highlight of each day – weather permitting – was to paddle in the shallow water with fishing nets and then examine our catch – small flat fish, crabs, strangers, seaweed and best of all shrimp. Not the steroid variety that I’ve become accustomed to here, but small brown ones packed with flavor. After jumping and shimmering in our nets, they were rewarded with the cooking pot. There was nothing like the satisfaction of feeding ourselves from the bountiful ocean.

Problem is the ocean isn’t so bountiful now. I recently experienced an environmental conference in Eleuthera at The Island School, www.islandschool.org, where marine scientists gathered to discuss the state of the oceans and climate change – it wasn’t pretty. Even the scientists were depressed.

Now I can’t look at or order fish without going through a litany of questions: Is it endangered? Is it farmed? If so, how? Are the farms damaging to the environment – other species? What are they fed – antibiotics? Dyes? If they’re wild caught – how? What damage to ocean biodiversity do the fishing methods cause? The shrimp I loved so much are now off limits to me. There simply isn’t a way – wild or farmed – that doesn’t drastically damage the environment. For example, here are two pictures showing what happens to healthy coral when the bottom-trawling boats have been through harvesting animals like shrimp. It could be the surface of the moon. It will take hundreds of years to return to the way it was.

Picture courtesy of http://www.marbef.org/

How much of an effect has over-fishing had? Consider this, the biomass in the North Atlantic fell by 90% during the 20th century. I don’t want to turn you into someone who waiters run away from when you open the menu, but if you want an easy way to know what your best choices for fish are then there’s a very handy guide put out by Seafood Watch published by the Monterey Bay Aquarium (a fabulous place, by the way) http://www.seafoodwatch.org/. It lists fish in three ways: Best Choices, Good Alternatives and Avoid.

Good luck. It isn’t easy being green!

2009-03-19T07:21:00.000-07:00

The products used to cover our model's Vitiligo

include Amazing Base and D2O

I sometimes find interesting research that I want to share with you. This happens to be about vitiligo. I’ve been touched so many times by the psychological misery of this condition and so it seemed worthwhile passing on something that might have some hope. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this new procedure really could do something meaningful?

Vitiligo phototherapy: Effectiveness of UV Vitiligo treatment
American Academy of Dermatology. Study Confirms Effectiveness of Revolutionary Vitiligo Treatment SCHAUMBURG, IL (July 12, 2001) – Imagine feeling perfectly healthy on the inside, but on the outside something looks wrong.

For millions of people who suffer from vitiligo, a disease in which patients experience a complete loss of pigment in localized areas of the skin, this feeling is one they know all too well. In a new study by dermatologist Henry W. Lim, MD, chairman of the department of dermatology at Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, Mich., the effectiveness of narrow-band UVB (NB-UVB) phototherapy as treatment for vitiligo was examined in a small sampling of patients. The results of the study are promising for this often hard-to-treat skin condition. After completing an average of 19 treatments with NB-UVB phototherapy, five of the seven vitiligo patients that participated in the study showed greater than 75 percent repigmentation. Additionally, one patient has remained repigmented 11 months after phototherapy was discontinued. "The successful repigmentation that these patients experienced is quite remarkable," explained Dr. Lim, co-author of "Narrow-Band Ultraviolet B is a Useful and Well-Tolerated Treatment for Vitiligo" published in the June 2001 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. "Vitiligo is a difficult skin condition to treat, and patients are often frustrated because results from some of the other current treatments are not nearly as favourable."

Vitiligo is a disease in which patients have a complete loss of pigment in localized areas of the skin. These areas, often around the mouth and eyes, become completely white. As a result, vitiligo can be cosmetically disfiguring, especially for dark-skinned people. Vitiligo affects 1 percent to 2 percent of the worldwide population and about half of the people who develop it do so before the age of 20. About one fifth of those with vitiligo have a family member with this condition. Vitiligo usually affects both sides of the body, and although the cause is generally not known, it is believed to be an autoimmune process. During the twelve-month trial period, 11 patients participated in Dr. Lim’s study. Therapy was administered three times a week and affected segments of the body were treated with NB-UVB, a light source that emits a very narrow spectrum of UVB, the portion of sunlight that causes sunburn. The dose of radiation was increased by 15 percent for each treatment. If mild burning, pain or blistering developed, the irradiation dose was decreased. Once the desirable 75 percent repigmentation was achieved, the frequency of treatments was tapered to twice a week for four weeks, then weekly for an additional four weeks.

NB-UVB therapy has several advantages over other therapies for vitiligo. While topical corticosteroid therapy has a success rate of 56 percent, long-term use of corticosteroids can result in thinning of the skin, stretch marks, and dilation of blood vessels. Another treatment option is oral or topical psoralen plus UVA (PUVA), the latter which has a success rate of 51 percent. However, patients need to ingest or apply psoralen before getting the light treatment, and long term use of oral PUVA for another skin disease, psoriasis, has been associated with an increased incidence of skin cancer. presently, there are only a few centers in the United States that have the capabilities for NB-UVB therapy; therefore patients undergoing this therapy have long distances to commute. While NB-UVB therapy has been used in Europe since the mid-1980s, there has not been any evidence that it causes an increase in skin cancer.

"Our findings confirmed that narrow-band UVB therapy is a useful and well-tolerated treatment option for patients with vitiligo," says Dr. Lim. "Although more research needs to be conducted, the successes thus far are promising to those who suffer from the psychological and physical effects of vitiligo."

2009-01-29T06:19:00.000-08:00

One of the joys of living in New England is that you get to feed the birds in the winter. It really makes you feel good to see them happily fluttering around the feeders. The more feeders you put out, the more birds you get. It’s as if they regulate their number.

We’re inundated right now with gold finches and pine siskins. I mean inundated. My mother and I have counted at least two hundred at one time. Obviously, it’s hard to get an accurate count because they’re always on the move. However, she and I are both firm in our opinion that it’s got to be in that region. We fill up the feeders but we also scatter seed on the ground and that’s where the crowd gathers.

One of the things I’ve noticed about the birds is that all goes swimmingly as long as there’s enough food for everyone. The trouble begins if I’ve been lazy and resisted donning coat, gloves, scarf and boots for the trek outside through snow and ice with the heavy seed bags.

A bickering begins – gentle at first and then raucous evolving into unmitigated quarreling. Larger birds start scaring off smaller birds who fly off to a safe perch in the crab trees waiting for an opportunity to return. They gather in conspiring groups while the bullies fill their bellies. Peace returns when I’ve braved the outdoors once more.

It got me wondering if we could solve a few of the world’s problems that way. Make sure everybody had a full belly and a place to perch.

Healing

2008-10-24T07:18:00.001-07:00

I’m no stranger to spas. I visit them across the United States and throughout the world. As you can imagine, this is one of the more pleasurable parts of my job. I see how much the spa environment contributes to peoples’ lives – women and men. But spas could contribute so much more if they were allowed to advertise what they can do for our health.

Spa is a word going back to Roman times when water and its attendant services were accorded their rightful place in general wellbeing. In fact, they were first designed for tired and wounded soldiers coming back from the many wars. It’s thought that the word “spa” comes from sanus per aquam (health by or through water.) The problem now is that words that used to be used in association with spa such as heal and cure, can get you into a lot of trouble in the US if you put them in your advertising copy. (Only those in the medical profession and, of course, drug companies are allowed to use those hallowed words without repercussions.)

This is unfortunate. I was in a spa in Slovenia once where I saw people in wheelchairs, on crutches and being helped by nurses as they made their way down to the mineral baths. They carried prescriptions that entitled them to days or weeks at the spa for ailments as diverse as arthritis, cancer and broken bones. This is a common site throughout Europe where the medical profession isn’t threatened by an alternative process that helps the body to heal itself.

I’ve just returned from an experience that fits right in with that picture. No, I didn’t see people lined up with prescriptions in their hands because this piece of heaven is in Sonoma County, California. However, its healing powers (there I said it) can’t be denied. It’s the Osmosis Day-Spa Sanctuary created by Michael Stusser after he had an experience in Japan that changed his life.

Suffering from excruciating sciatica and having tried every traditional and untraditional method available, he was told about cedar enzyme baths. The baths look like a big pile of sawdust but they are actually a blend of finely ground cedar, rice bran, and plant enzymes that heat naturally, by fermentation up to 140 degrees. This biologically-generated warmth mimics the body's metabolic process and provides a heat that seems to go into your very core.

For 20 minutes Michael was submerged in the chips and eventually felt the sciatica leave his body. He was cured! (There I said the other word.) It was such an important experience that he vowed to bring cedar enzyme baths to the United States. Lucky Sonoma! And there followed another life changing experience.

In 1985, he purchased a 400ft chicken coop and recycled the wood to build his first baths. Such a success, he moved to a larger piece of land that had been used by locals to dump garbage – everything from mattresses to trucks. In true pioneer spirit, he built his five-acre slice of heaven complete with stunning Japanese gardens and pagodas.

Why am I writing about Osmosis? It isn’t because it has a unique atmosphere; it does. Or because it’s beautiful; it is. Or because it feels luxurious without being pretentious; it does. Or because it’s surrounded by redwoods and vineyards that produce pinot noirs to sell your soul for. It’s because this is an example of a place where you can come to heal and be cured and I think it’s a shame that people can’t be told that.

I understand the reasons for guarding those words. We don’t want to revert to the days of snake oil, but I think there has to be some relaxation of the boundaries as more and more people are looking for an alternative to endless amounts of drugs with their attendant side-effects. The irony of it all is that Western medicine is actually a new-comer to the world of healing. You’d never know it now.

The Importance of Humor

2008-09-25T10:12:00.000-07:00

I couldn't resist borrowing this blog about British humor from Dave Trott, Creative Director and the "T" in CST Advertising in London. It feels to me that with all the current rampant predictions of gloom and doom, we need good humor to help us get some perspective. As a Brit myself, I have no trouble admitting that the British are weird when it comes to the art of humor, ranging from the worst slapstick to the most sophisticated irony. But they have an uncanny ability to reduce serious and life-threatening situations to one-liners that make one laugh and/or cry – either way it diverts us and relieves the tension. Mark Twain believed that humor was the most powerful tool in the world when used appropriately. Nothing helps us to see ourselves the way good humor can. So enjoy Dave Trott’s take on it and let’s hope we can inject some of our own in the months to come.

I wrote recently that it’s difficult to be a writer in a foreign country. An example happened to me last week. I was at Hampstead tube, and the ticket collector had a new walkie-talkie. He was obviously very proud of it. He spoke into it loudly enough for us all to hear. He said: “Tango 1 calling Tango 2. Tango 1 calling Tango 2. Over.”

I heard a muffled voice reply something. Then the ticket collector said testily into it: “No Chris: you’re Tango 3, Terry’s Tango 2.” I laughed to myself, and thought something that silly could only happen in this country. It makes you proud to be British. Then I thought, why is that? Why are we so proud of looking silly? Germans or Spanish or Chinese would die before they’d let anyone see them looking silly.

We revel in it.

Take the war in Afghanistan. The British and American forces were involved in really heavy fighting with the Taliban. The worst of the fighting was in and around the caves of Tora Bora. The American forces dubbed them, ‘The Caves of Death’. The British forces referred to them as, ‘Tora Bora Tomkinson’.

Later I read a report about the airborne tanker crews. The American pilots were flying missions from carriers in The Gulf. They didn’t have enough fuel to make the return trip unless they refueled at night, 30,000 feet up, from British airborne tankers. One American pilot said, “These guys flew missions that saved our lives. But when we linked up with them, they held signs up to the window saying, CASH ONLY, NO CHEQUES.”

The same thing happened in World War 2. It was 1940 and America wasn’t in the war. France had just fallen and everyone knew Britain was next. Ed Murrow, the famous American reporter, was doing a weekly radio broadcast back to the US from London. He said, “Sometimes it’s hard for an American to understand the British. Today the whole of Europe has fallen to Nazi Germany. Only the people of this small island are left, on their own against a mighty war machine. And yet as I went on the street this morning, the mood of the population seemed somehow lighter, more optimistic. It didn’t make any sense. Then I saw a newspaper seller with a placard in front of him that read, BRITAIN AND GERMANY IN THE FINAL.”

2008-08-15T13:10:00.000-07:00

I just read this in the August edition of Allure.

Women can perform well in math – until they are reminded of the stereotype that men are better at it. At Dartmouth College, researchers led by psychologist Anne C. Krendl studied 28 college women who strongly agreed that it was important to them to be good at math. All had their brains scanned while they completed a variety of tasks, including two sets of difficult math problems. Before the second test, the investigators noted to some of the women that “research has shown gender differences in math ability and performance.” The subjects who had been reminded of this performed significantly worse the second time, whereas the others did significantly better. Also, the unprompted group showed activity in parts of the brain that are associated with math learning, but those reminded of the stereotype experienced activation of a brain area that processes negative social information, essentially distracting them from their task. Simply being aware of this effect can help women overcome it, Krendl says.

So, we really are what we think.

Tennis Addict

2008-07-08T06:09:00.000-07:00

French Open ball boy sheltering a junior player between games.

I’m an unabashed tennis addict. It’s my mother’s fault. She indoctrinated me at a very young age. Wimbledon was the highlight of our year. I remember my heart pounding when she would draw the curtains to keep the June light out of the living room so we could see the ball clearer. Our 9” television screen needed all the help it could get. And then the players would walk on…

Don’t tell her, but Wimbledon was the only thing for which I skipped school.

Once a year, she and I would make the pilgrimage to Wimbledon by bus, train and tube to line up all night so that we could get standing room “under the clock” on Centre Court. We’d camp out on the pavement with all the other addicts counting the hours until they let us in the grounds. We had to pass by the strawberries and cream that were offered in mouth-watering profusion, but we did have our own sandwiches and a flask of tea. It was the best of times.

Now I’m lucky enough to have gone to all the majors – Australia, France and, of course, the US. We even have a really large TV with high definition. My mother and I marvel at how clear the ball is. But along with a clear ball comes other surprises – skin tone. I’m shocked at the sun damage on the players’ faces. I know this may seem trivial in the light of perfecting the ultimate drop shot, but a tennis player’s professional life is a short one and then what? Brown spots forever. I wish some of these highly-paid coaches would throw in a little skincare advice for women and men alike. My ultimate tennis hero is Roger Federer but even he is getting some uneven pigmentation – on his right cheekbone, I believe.

If anyone knows him, please let him know that I’m available to tell him about the dangers of UVB and UVA rays – that’s if I could stop staring long enough to get my tongue moving.

2008-05-28T11:32:00.000-07:00

I love gardening and I love the spring. I always think it’s worth battling through the winters to watch life returning in such an abundance of shapes, sizes and colors. I wait patiently guessing when the crab trees are going to bloom; watch carefully for the first sign of pink in the buds of the tree peonies knowing that they will burst overnight and produce a flower so exotic it takes your breath away, and I look anxiously for the first sign of the white narcissi I bought on the day my father died. I planted them under a tree so I could always say hello to him in the spring – a season he loved, too.

There’s such an enormous sense of satisfaction when I see the Monarch butterflies feasting on the flowers. I feel truly honored that they think my flowers are good enough for them. I don’t feel the same way about some of the other creepy crawlies but when I see how many birds there are in the garden, I know they’re there because we’re offering them a truly varied and tasty menu. When things get a bit hot and heavy with work, I walk in the garden and see what’s new, what needs dividing, what needs moving to a better spot. It’s always a work in progress. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don’t and sometimes there are fabulous surprises. Nature takes over and does something incredible. You learn patience and trust as a gardener.

I’ve always marveled how in nature colors never clash. I suppose it’s because nothing is ever just one color but a blend of many shades of intensity. A good lesson for makeup!

Spring is such a busy time of the year for me that I usually forget to do one very important thing which is to remember my friend Daisy’s birthday. She lives in England and reads my blog. So I’m saying Happy Birthday to her now and hoping that she’s winning lots of riding ribbons and doing well at school. Perhaps I should plant something in the garden to remind me when it’s time to look for a birthday card!

2008-04-17T10:20:00.000-07:00

I’ve just come back from Israel where we opened a new distributorship. I have to admit that I didn’t want to go. The media is always full of the bad things and none of the good. It took exactly five minutes for my distributor to persuade me. Looking back, I don’t know what I expected - perhaps a tent in the middle of the desert. What I found was that some parts of Israel look like Provence – lush and green with vineyards covering the hills. It also has wide beaches, white villages, ancient ruins, fabulous restaurants and a warm welcome wherever we went.

I had a unique experience in the Negev desert near the Dead Sea where we picked up sand of almost every color in the rainbow – ochre, red, green, blue, lilac. There I was looking at mineral powders millions of years old and still full of color. Cleopatra makeup! However, the FDA would have had a fit if we put it anywhere near our faces because of all the impurities the minerals must have contained.

Of course, we had to take a dip in the Dead Sea and slather ourselves in the black mud that stands in tubs along the beach. It felt wonderful going on and I must say that my skin felt smooth and alive afterwards. It seemed to take all the winter dullness away.

So I suppose this blog is to say thank you to all my new friends in Israel and to say how excited I was to see your excitement at discovering mineral powders that were pure enough to put on your faces. Don’t forget Powder-Me SPF, you’re going to need its easy protection as you get closer to those hot, steamy months.

Ceilidh

2008-04-04T08:49:00.000-07:00

My beloved Labrador just sliced her ear. She loves to make snow angels and we’ve had plenty of snow this year for her to indulge her passion. This time there was a piece of glass.

When she came back from her run with her other Labrador friends, she greeted me as always by picking up the nearest stuffed thing – this time a walrus – and wagged her way towards me.

Then I saw this nasty flap hanging off her ear. Intent on greeting me as if she hadn’t seen me for six years, she was immensely surprised when I insisted she stop the celebration to let me examine her ear – the indignity of it all. I could practically hear her saying, “What’s all the fuss about?” A quick trip to the vet and several stitches later she was safely ensconced on her chaise longue and wondering when the next adventure was going to happen.

I, of course, was consumed with worry – the ear is an extremity, infection, losing her ear, death – hmmm! Then I remembered reading these words, “Don’t believe your thoughts.” This phrase comes from a book by Marci Shimoff called Happy for No Reason. She was the keynote speaker at our recent Sales Conference and changed our lives. I’m offering Marci’s book to you now as a way to raise the happiness level of your life.

My dog, by the way, is always happy for no reason. Oh, her name is Ceilidh which is the Gaelic word for celebration and pronounced kay-lee. In case you think that’s awfully fancy, it’s a word that’s used often in Scotland like this, “Let’s have a bonnie wee ceilidh.” Translation, “Let’s kick up our heels.” The name really suits her.

Her ear is healing nicely, incidentally. She was never worried about it.

Our Green Team

2008-03-13T11:23:00.000-07:00

Here is a picture of our Green Team. These wonderful women come from all areas of our company – Customer Service, Marketing, Warehouse, Administration and my assistant. They are looking into all corners of our business to see where we can improve our environmental consciousness.

Here are some of the things they’ve accomplished so far:

Sourced compact fluorescent light bulbs at .75c – the company is offering these to its employees for home use at 50% discount
Eliminated plastic cups, plates and utensils
Installed timers in bathrooms and kitchen that automatically switch off the lights
Instituted a policy to turn off all computers at night
Sourced 100% recycled paper for our fax and copying machines
Instituted a policy of double-sided copies
Switched to “green” cleaning products
Placed recycling bins at every desk

They are now looking at ways to encourage car-pooling, eliminate plastic wrap from our warehouse, installing a water filter to take care of the whole building, and putting pressure on our CFO to replace our boiler so we have efficient heat. (I think they’re winning.)

What all this shows me is that small things add up to big things. We’re going to do a study to show what our savings have been but more important than that is the good feeling it’s giving us all. We’re making a contribution not just in the products we produce but how we conduct ourselves. It isn’t that we haven’t thought of these things in the past but time is always the enemy.

It took the formation of the Green Team to put energy behind the idea and get it done. Sitting around the table with these young women as they explore ideas and make decisions (not always convenient or comfortable ones), inspires me do more and more.

We’re in the process of designing a new office building. It’s going to be a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) building with roofs that don’t have shingles but grow plants instead. I’M EXCITED!!

Vitamin D

2008-03-10T11:39:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered why we have such a range of skin colors in the world? Our African ancestors had dark skins because the melanin helped to protect them from ultraviolet light – up to an SPF 15. This UV protection, however, meant that it slowed down vitamin D synthesis. Not a problem when you live in an area that has so much sunshine.

But, as humans migrated northwards, exposure to the sun diminished. Skins became lighter because protection wasn’t as important as being able to synthesize vitamin D. (The lighter the skin the more efficient is the chemical reaction between the skin and UVB.) White skin synthesizes vitamin D six times faster than dark skin. This is why I found my sun-phobic dermatologist the other day standing in the parking lot wearing his ski jacket and holding his face to the sun.

How important is vitamin D? For years, we have known about its role in bone building and how it acts in the kidneys, intestines and the skeleton to help control the flow of calcium into and out of bones from the bloodstream. However, in an article entitled Sunshine Vitamin by Luz E. Tavera-Mendoza and John H. Shite for Scientific American, they point out that studies of vitamin D’s function have broadened, revealing that the so-called sunshine vitamin does far more than build bones. Extensive evidence now shows that D has potent anticancer actions and also serves as an important regulator of immune system responses. Moreover, many of D’s newly recognized benefits are maximized when it is present in the bloodstream at levels considerably higher than those found in many populations. These findings, together with epidemiological data linking low vitamin D levels to disease, support the possibility that widespread vitamin D deficiency is contributing to a number of serious illnesses.

The other source of vitamin D is through food, but food provides relatively small doses of D compared with amounts made by the skin. For example, one of the higher sources, cod-liver oil provides 1,360 IU in one tablespoon, whereas full-body exposure to UVB for 15 to 20 minutes at midday in summer provides 10,000 IU.

So, where are we with all this? Clearly some sun exposure is necessary. No more than 20 minutes though because UVB light will end up degrading vitamin D to prevent too much of it from building up in the skin. (Don’t get confused with exposure in tanning beds. This does not synthesize vitamin D. Tanning beds emit UVA rays which go deeper into the skin and destroy our collagen and elastin. No one has yet found anything good to say about UVA!)

If you don’t see the sun for weeks, then make sure you incorporate food sources of vitamin D such as cod-liver oil, cooked tuna, sardines, mackerel or salmon, shiitake mushrooms and organic eggs.

I’ve always noticed that my nails grow longer and stronger when I’m in the sun for a while, so I know there must be something to this!

SPF Rating.

2008-02-21T06:34:00.000-08:00

When you’re looking for a mineral powder with sun protection, choose one that has an SPF rating on the label. If there is no SPF rating, the product has not been tested in an accredited laboratory. The FDA does not allow you to assume sun protection even though there may be titanium dioxide and zinc oxide in the formula. Much depends on the type, quantity and quality of minerals used and how they are blended.

All of our bases have an SPF 20 and have gone through the 20-subject testing required by the FDA. As you’ll have seen in my previous blog, an SPF rating only refers to the UVB ray; the ray that causes sunburn. It doesn’t indicate protection from the more damaging ray, UVA. However, we may be getting closer to the FDA approving the Japanese method for testing UVA protection. Then, we’ll have a symbol that we’ll be able to put on our labels and you will know to what degree your sunscreen helps protect you from UVA rays.

We’ve just brought out an all-over body powder called Powder-Me SPF which has an SPF 30. We also asked the lab to test for UVA under the Japanese method. We found that Powder-Me SPF was rated as “High.” So for now you will see this designation on our packaging: UVA/UVB Sunscreen, SPF 30.

Powder-Me SPF works as an all-over body protection for women, men and children. There are two colors. One is a translucent powder and the other gives the look of a golden tan. It was tested on one hundred women last summer to rave reviews. Let me know how you like it.

Of course, there’s always another side to every issue and this one has to do with vitamin D. The more we find out about this vitamin, the more important it appears to be. Since we get our largest does of vitamin D from the sun, is avoiding the sun good for us? But that’s the topic of another blog.

UV

2008-02-14T11:57:00.000-08:00

I have a healthVest™ which is an exercise harness that travels everywhere with me. It allows me to do resistance and aerobic training simultaneously – right in the heart of Shanghai if I want to. The resistance is provided by rubber tubing which I pull when I walk. If it’s nice out, I attach my dog’s lead to the belt and we walk together. Every once in a while, one of the tubes snaps and I have to replace it. I asked the inventor why the tubes snap more in the summer than the winter. His answer was ultraviolet light which degrades the tubing.

Oh, my! If UV can do that to rubber tubing what does it do to our skins? Now that’s a scary thought. Enter sunscreens! Unfortunately, no sunscreen can protect you from all the photons that bombard us daily, but some can do more than others. I’m amazed how much confusion there is around sunscreens these days. It’s something the FDA is working to unravel.

In its most simplistic form your SPF helps to protect you from UVB rays. These are short rays that enter the top layer of your skin and burn you. That is all the SPF protection is required to do.

There’s another more dangerous ray called UVA which is a longer ray and goes deeper into the skin. This is the ray that causes tanning – the body’s response to injury. In the industry we call UVB the burning ray and UVA the aging ray because it destroys the mattress of the skin the collagen and elastic layers. It also does a lot more than that, such as weakening your immune system. This is the ray tanning beds use. These beds are often referred to as time machines on fast forward!

It doesn’t matter how high the SPF rating is; it does not protect you from UVA rays. Presently, the FDA has not approved a method for testing UVA protection. Europe, Japan, Australia and some other countries have had established testing for years. The FDA now has the Japanese method under consideration to approve for the US. We’re hoping that something will happen this year on that.

In the meantime, the best you can do is to look for a “broad spectrum” designation which indicates some UVA protection but doesn’t tell you how much. Alternatively, you may see something like this: UVA/UVB Sunscreen, SPF 30 which also indicates UVA protection. You’ll see this designation on our latest product Powder-Me SPF.

To be continued………….

Green Team

2008-02-08T11:30:00.000-08:00

We’ve recently instituted a Green Team at our company whose job it is to look to see how we can control the waste we generate and how we can lessen our carbon footprint. Amazing things have happened. First of all, when I asked for volunteers eight women immediately applied soon to be joined by another two. They have thrown themselves into this task with enthusiasm and creativity. We have one woman on the team who grew up without electricity, so she isn’t daunted by anything.

Secondly, we found that we could do simple things quickly that really make a difference. For example, we discovered that we were using 50 disposable cups a day. That’s 250 a week and that’s 13,000 a year! It makes me ashamed when I think of how long we’ve been doing this.

We’ve found a local company who for $6 a mug will make them with individual names printed on them. This means that the mugs will always find the right owner and we’ll know if anyone leaves dirty ones in the sink! (That won’t happen in our company, of course.)

Some of the most hazardous materials we use every day are cleaning products. (Ask anyone with chemical sensitivities.) We spoke to our cleaning company to find that it’s no more expensive to use environmentally friendly products, easier on his cleaning staff and certainly better for our collective health.

Little things do matter – just like the makeup you wear. We’re bombarded with so many toxic chemicals that it becomes more and more important to eliminate as many as possible. Your skin is the largest organ you have. It’s often called the body’s third lung or the third kidney. It takes things in and it lets things out all day long. In other words, it breathes. Make sure you know what you’re putting on your skin. Read the labels.

An Effective Test

2007-12-28T09:14:00.000-08:00

CA-125 and TVU Tests for Ovarian Cancer
From an article by David Johnson, Ph.D., and David Sandmire, M.D. with Daniel Klein

The carcinogenic antigen (CA) 125 blood test measures levels of a protein that is normally confined within a cell. Ovarian cancer cells may produce an excess of these protein molecules, and therefore the CA-125 test can help in diagnosing and monitoring this disease. It’s important to remember that simply measuring blood levels of CA-125 alone cannot effectively find early ovarian cancer. In many early-stage ovarian cancers, this molecule is not necessarily released in large amounts. In conjunction with a transvaginal ultrasound (TVU) screening, however, the CA-125 test can be very effective. A transvaginal ultrasound, also known as an endovaginal ultrasound, involves the use of sound waves to delineate internal structures. The transducer produces images that can be seen on a video monitor, and a hard copy can be made on film.

The test is completely painless and does not take much time.

A letter to all our skin care professionals.

2007-12-26T10:48:00.001-08:00

I’ve just lost one of my closest friends to ovarian cancer. She’d been my buddy for almost 30 years. We met as mini-skirted Brits in New York. There wasn’t much we didn’t share. I remember how she comforted me on an early failed romance by giving me a cup of tea, hot-buttered cinnamon toast and a good ego-boost. Later, it was my turn when she went through the misery of divorce from a man she always loved. The day she called me about her illness was just another day at my desk. Me, “How are ya?!” Her, “It isn’t good, Jane.” I went for a long walk in a cloud of disbelief trying to imagine what things would be like without her. It took eleven years. She beat the odds by six. I put that down to her indomitable spirit. Even after forty sessions of chemotherapy she would often tell me how grateful she was for everything she had in life. She turned her hospital visits into parties for the nurses. Then she pulled her own plug. “That’s it,” she declared over the phone from her hospital bed. “No more chemo, no more prodding and pulling.” And she checked herself out. Preparing me, she said, “You’ll be shocked at how thin I am.” And I was. Two weeks before she died, she had thirty people over for a party she called, “A Celebration of Life.” This is the time of the year I’ll miss her the most because she especially loved the holidays. She began the ramp up at Thanksgiving and moved into Christmas like Santa driving a Porsche. Christmas trees, lights, gifts, mince pies, crown roasts and candles. Candles — she never put two candles on the table when ten would do. Why am I telling you all this? Because I want you to know that what she looked forward to most of all during her illness, the thing that gave her the biggest lift, was a visit to our local salon for the works – facial, manicure, pedicure, waxing (she didn’t have a hair on her head but her body hair flourished) and getting her various wigs styled. She had one long blonde one that made her feel sexy. So, as we approach the holiday season and get caught up in its commercialism, always remember that the gift of your hands can, for a moment, help a woman forget that she’s dying and make her smile. “Jane, I feel like a million bucks!” A million was cheap. The happiness in her voice was worth much more than that. I’ve always felt proud to be part of this caring industry. Now the gratitude swells my heart. Thank you for everything you do for all the women out there who need to forget something for a while. Our appreciation and gratitude for your partnership with us. We all wish you a holiday season full of satisfaction and hope.

Talk to you soon, Jane

Moscow

2007-12-18T11:59:00.001-08:00

I just came back from a trip to Moscow where Bob and I opened up our new distributorship. It was my first time in Russia and so I was amazed at the huge scale of everything including the Kremlin, which is very beautiful. So are the women, by the way. Now I’m beginning to understand why so many of our top models are Russian. The Guild of Professional Beauty in the UK just rated us as the number one makeup brand in the professional industry there. All thanks to our hard-working distributor, David Alpert. Kevin Mendelson, our gifted national trainer, was invited to New Zealand and Australia to show off his talents. He was a huge success. We’re now in 43 countries and counting!

Did you know?

2007-12-17T08:13:00.001-08:00

Water fluoridation has been officially banned in Austria, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, West Germany and Yugoslavia. The FDA classifies fluoride as a prescription drug and a poison more toxic than lead. The United States Pharmacopoeia and the Physicians Desk Reference report numerous side effects caused by fluoride including headaches, nausea, vomiting, gastric distress, skin eruptions, weakness, pain or aching of bones, mottled teeth and thyroid disorders. Could fluoride be the next tobacco?

Dry lips.

2007-12-12T12:13:00.000-08:00

Chaffed or cracked lips are a call for moisture. Since lips don’t have oil glands and are just an extension of the delicate membranes in our mouth, they’re sitting ducks for abuse. We abuse them more by using petrolatum-based lip balms which interfere with the lips’ ability to hold on to the moisture they do have. (Ever wondered why the more you apply lip balm, the more you need to apply.) The answer is to use lip products without petroleum-derived ingredients. That also goes for lip gloss, by the way. Most glosses get their shine from petrolatum. Ours comes from a mix of organic vegetable oils.

We know that if you wear lipstick every day you’ll end up eating five tubes a year. We think we’ve inadvertently added to the statistic. Our newest exfoliator/plumper Sugar&Butter contains organic brown sugar and is so lip licking good that we’ve had reports of people snacking on it.

But it’s so much more than a snack. It’s a sure fire way to luscious lips. First, slough off any flakiness with the organic brown sugar lip scrub which also adds its own moisture and then get ready for the plumping.

Flip the tube over and feel the way the shea butter coats, moistens and protects your lips. In a few seconds, you’ll feel the plumping begin. Formulated with delicious ginger extracts and a natural peptide which has been clinically proven to stimulate collagen synthesis, I can promise you that the feeling it gives your lips is addictive. You honestly will see and feel the difference..

Emmy Gift Suite

2007-12-03T09:35:00.000-08:00

Olivia Wilde from NBC’s “The Black Donnellys” with LA Sales Consultant, Leilah Seif

We participated in an Emmy Gift Suite on September 13th and 14th, during which a number of celebrities made appointments for an exclusive makeover with jane iredale products.

Fall for Metallics

2007-11-27T08:06:00.000-08:00

As the runways predicted, copper is the hottest metallic trend for fall. Taking inspiration from leading designers like Stella McCartney, Dolce & Gabanna, Versace and Louis Vuitton, jane iredale introduces Copper Liquid Eye Liner, a beautifully rich copper with amazing staying power and Sunbeam highlighter, a rich new metallic quad of shades ranging from pink to copper, designed to be used individually on eyes, cheeks and lips or as an all over highlighter.

Copper Liquid Eye Liner is a dramatic, chemical-free liquid liner.

• Easy to apply, non-irritating formula
• Made with highly pigmented iron oxides - no damaging chemicals
• Essential oils nourish the skin and prevent drying
• Special brush provides professional precision
• Available in four gorgeous colors

It's incredible staying-power is due to its unique formula of iron oxide coloring and essential oil preserving agents. $20.00

Sunbeam is a quartet of shimmery-pink, go-anywhere pressed powders.

• A set of four gorgeous, pink-themed shades
• Ideal for use on the eyes, cheeks and lips
• Suitable for day or evening wear
• Provides a subtle shimmer and a soft touch of color
• Apply any shade under your jane iredale lip plumper for instant lip color

The gentle, sexy shimmer in Sunbeam comes from real flakes of 24-karat gold that provide a natural and alluring glow to everything it touches! $46.00

Be the Plum of Everybody's Eyes

2007-11-19T08:51:00.000-08:00

Introducing NEW jane iredale Plum Plus Cream-to-Powder Eyeliner, a trio of rich, pearlescent purple creams that cater to your every mood.

Complementary colors achieve a multitude of looks from natural to exotic. Subtle daytime and evening creations are simple with Plum Plus -- a creamy eyeliner and shadow in three colors.

Eyeliner stays smudge-free all day long and eyeshadow is crease free! For a smoky purple eye, use the larger purple hue all over lid, the darker hue as the liner and the lightest hue as a highlighter!

The creativity is entirely up to you!

Step #3: Application

2007-11-05T06:36:00.000-08:00

Cleanse and moisturize skin.

Then apply concealer making sure you reach up under the lower lashes and into the corner of the eye, using our Camouflage Brush for those hard to reach places. Be sure to blend the product to the top of the cheekbone, by using a gentle pressing action with the pads of the first two fingers.

Don’t overdo the blending since the result may be to rub the concealer away. And remember, because there are no fillers or binders in our products a little goes a very long way! Follow with your favorite jane iredale mineral foundation, if needed.

For very dark circles, you may layer concealer, powder then concealer and powder again. Make sure they are put on in thin layers so you don’t build too much product. Layering like this can be very effective.

Images from www.gettyimages.com and www.janeiredale.com

Fall 2007

2007-10-31T09:25:00.000-07:00

Like the hot runway trends you will see this fall, you will see a shift in the world of makeup toward a smokier, sexy eye and a neutral shimmered lip. For the magazine cover look -- try lining eyes with your favorite Eye Pencil and brushing lids with earthy toned Eye Shadows. Highlight the brow by swiping a neutral shadow like Bone or Taupe (dependent on your skin tone) just under the eyebrow. For a delicious pair of lips use a gloss that glistens like our Soft Peach or Wild Apple. With a sizzling look like this you will be armored to take on the season full force.

Step #2: Find the perfect shade for your skin.

2007-10-23T09:52:00.000-07:00

The right concealer can change someone’s life. We believe we have the right concealers in Active Light and Circle\Delete for under the eyes. The best tool for these is our Camouflage Brush with a finger for using the body’s heat to work it into the skin.

Camouflage Brush

Choose a color that is slightly lighter than your skin tone – one to two shades at most. Using a concealer that is too light for one’s skin tone is the most common mistake made.

Lead in Lipsticks

2007-10-16T08:05:00.000-07:00

The Lead in Lipsticks story that hit the headlines recently is the result of a study conducted by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics on a variety of red lipsticks that were bought from drugstores and department stores around the country. The study showed that 49% of the lipsticks were free of lead and 61% contained from 0.03 to 0.65 parts per million (ppm) of lead. Interestingly, they also found that three lipsticks – the same brand and the same color – contained different amounts of lead.

Lead gets into lipsticks primarily through FD&C and D&C dyes which give them their color. The more vibrant the color the higher percentage of dyes. The FDA requires that manufacturers of dyes send each batch to the FDA for testing for heavy metals. Each batch is then certified. The FDA allows 10 – 20 ppm of trace metals. The FDA believes this is consistent with its longstanding goal of reducing consumers’ lead exposure to the lowest level that can be practicably obtained.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to live in a lead-free environment. Lead is in the air, water, and our soil.

Because we have always wanted to provide the “cleanest” products possible, we have conducted tests with an accredited laboratory on all of our products for heavy metals including lead. All colors passed with tests revealing no detection of heavy metals.

If you would like to read the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics’ Report here is the link:
http://www.safecosmetics.org

Circle/Delete: Repair, Fade & Moisturize

2007-10-10T08:13:00.000-07:00

Circle\Delete™ is an eye treatment as well as a concealer that enables you to choose from a duo of colors in each pot to obtain the exact color for your skin. Formulated with conditioners like jojoba esters and avocado oil, both high in vitamins A, C, D and E to nourish the under-eye area. Circle\Delete also contains vitamin K, which is thought to repair blood vessels and lighten the skin.

Step #1: Choose the Concealer That’s Right For You

2007-10-02T08:49:00.000-07:00

Active-Light™Under-eye Concealer, like all of our products, is free of binders such as talc. As a result, there is no need to pile on product and risk creasing or accentuating fine lines.

The mineral particles in Active Light™ create a soft-focus effect and change the way light is reflected from the skin, camouflaging any sign of fatigue and concealing dark circles.

As an added bonus, studies have shown the percentage of Buckwheat Wax in Active Light™ may even reduce puffiness around the eyes. And its convenient pen packaging allows for a mess-free application anywhere, anytime!

Under-Eye Camouflage : A Step-by-Step Guide

2007-10-02T08:47:00.000-07:00

This is the number one beauty complaint from women. Because we’ve all experienced dark under-eye circles before, our beauty experts have compiled a step-by-step guide to whisking dark circles away in seconds for a smooth, healthy-looking complexion. Keep checking back each week for a new section!

Put an End to Shiny, Oily Skin

2007-04-05T06:15:00.000-07:00

We've all been there before -- the dreaded mid-day shine show when oils in our skin put on a show for everyone to see! Instead of hiding behind your cubicle, try exercising these five tips from our jane iredale makeup team:

1. Drink plenty of water.
This is most likely the last thing women think to do during the day. As an easy guide, try drinking six to eight 8 oz. glasses of water a day. This helps to flush skin cells of impurities and keep our skin hydrated. Oddly enough, when skin is dry, sebaceous glands go into overdrive to keep it moist (giving us an unsightly sheen).

"Drinking water is essential for clean skin and your overall health. Water is essential for carrying waste material out of your body. It is also the primary transporter of nutrients throughout your body." About.com

2. Moisturize, Moisturize, Moisturize
When skin is dry, glands produce more oil to coat and protect it. By moisturizing your skin (every day) you are protecting your skin and minimizing oil secretion. Not only that, moist skin has been known to age slower than moisture-deprived skin -- isn't that reason enough?

3. Use a Primer
Our jane iredale Absence primer doesn’t just absorb oil but helps to control over-active sebaceous glands and regulate the pH balance of the skin.

One of the active ingredients in Absence is hydrated silica, which acts like a liposome. The hydrated silica forms a sphere with extracts of green tea, pomegranate and seaweed attached to the outside. The inside of the sphere is loaded with seaweed compounds that are released by the action of body heat. These seaweeds not only help to reduce sebaceous hypersecretion but also help to regulate the pH balance of the skin.

The now empty silica shell begins to absorb sebum without affecting moisture on the skin, because hydrated silica can hold seven times its molecular weight. By encapsulating the oil, it forms a barrier between it and the makeup so that the wearer can stay matte all day. Absence also contains a UV titanium and micronized zinc oxide to obtain a broad spectrum SPF 15. Although the product looks light in the compact it is transparent on the skin allowing any skin tone to wear the product.

The aesthetic benefit of Absence, apart from oil control, is that it can be used as a primer for any type of skin. It literally fills in fine lines, making the skin smooth and ready to receive makeup. Available in two colors: Absence and Absence 2, for deeper complexions.

4. Consider a Finishing Powder PureMatte Finish Powder can be used under or over the mineral base to control oil and shine. Apply with a brush and touch up with the puff provided throughout the day.

5. Blotting Papers work very well to touch up during the day!
jane iredale's natural Facial Blotting Papers are the perfect solution to quickly and discreetly blot away excess shine.

Made from 100 percent natural flax seeds, which are more absorbent than traditional rice paper or linen, Facial Blotting Papers absorb excess oil on the face without disturbing makeup or depositing additional product onto the skin. These absorbent flax seed sheets instantly tame shine to reveal a fresh, matte face that’s always ready for that big close-up.

Packaged in a slim and sleek gold case that can double as a business card holder, Facial Blotting Papers can go anywhere — from the office to the most glamorous soirée. The portable compact is ideal for slipping into your pocket, purse or desk drawer.

The Perfect Nude Lipgloss-

2007-03-28T12:49:00.000-07:00

Having trouble finding the perfect nude lip gloss?

Our trick of the trade:
Mix Just Gloss PureGloss for Lips with your current Amazing Base shade for the ultimate nude lip gloss.

With a wide variety of shades to choose from, your new customized lip shade provides not only the perfect hue but also sun protection and luxe moisturizing agents.

With healthy ingredients such as White Lily Bulb Extract, Aloe Leaf Juice, Jojoba Seed Oil, Avocado Oil, Green Tea Extract, Safflower Seed Oil, vitamin E, Tangerine Peel Oil, Ginger Root Extract lips are guaranteed to stay nourished all day long. Natural mica provides just enough shimmer!

A little daring? Why not mix Just Gloss with an alluring shade of 24K gold dust! Our pick for the season is pink.

• All of our glosses are formulated in a base of organic vegetable oils.
• Ingredients provide staying power, moisture and nourishment to the lips.
• A tingly mint and ginger flavor that is a natural plumper.
• Contains grape seed and pomegranate extracts as antioxidants.

Urban Legends: Lead Lipstick Test

2007-03-20T08:16:00.000-07:00

There is a fear-mongering e-mail about a test for lead in lipsticks that has been circulating the internet since May, 2003. It is long on misinformation and short on verified facts.

The e-mail suggests that if you transfer some lipstick to your hand and run your gold ring over it, the lipstick will turn black if there is lead in it. Certain metals, including gold, may leave a dark streak when scratched on various surfaces, but this is an artifact of the metals themselves, not an indicator of a chemical reaction with lead or any other substance.

According to a statement from the American Cancer Society, laboratory tests have shown that some name-brand lipsticks sold in the U.S. do contain trace amounts of lead from the dyes used in their manufacture, but the lead content of these coloring agents is strictly controlled by the Food & Drug Administration to meet currently accepted safety standards and pose no serious health threat.

Moreover, the message is both inaccurate and misleading when it implies that cancer is the main health hazard posed by lead exposure. Though it is indeed listed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a probable human carcinogen, lead has other, more direct health effects -- including brain damage, nerve disorders and reproductive problems -- that are far more worrisome. Source: urbanlegends.com

Thus, a gold ring test will not detect lead in lipstick

Update: A new version of this message circulating since September 2006 contains the additional claim that the material was authored by a Dr. Nahid Neman of the breast cancer unit of Mt. Sinai Hospital in Toronto.
We’ve done our research with the CCTFA (Canadian Cosmetic, Toiletry & Fragrance Association) and no such person exists.

Glases 101: How to Enhance Eyes

2007-03-19T12:53:00.000-07:00

What makeup looks good with eyeglasses? For women who don't wear contacts, eye makeup is a constant battle. Enhance eyes or draw attention away? How do you know which to do?

It depends first on your eyes: myopia or hyperopia? That is, nearsightedness or farsightedness? Jane Iredale offers her tips on what to do in each situation!

Jane notes: "If you are nearsighted your eyes will look smaller behind glasses so wear more makeup in order to define your eyes. Pale but vibrant shadows with a liner on upper and lower lids. And, yes, two coats of mascara on upper lashes."

Try PureLash Lenghtening Mascara in Jet Black and new Liquid Liners (available in Black, Black/Brown and glamorous Gold).

"If you are farsighted," Jane notes, "your eyes will look larger behind glasses so you might want to tone down your makeup – or may be not! Definitely be careful with the liner. Think about getting it as close to the lashes as possible so it becomes a real lash line. Go easy on the mascara."

Try Creme-to-Powder Eyeliner with a jane iredale Eyeliner Brush. Product goes on so smooth and finishes so crisp, you'd swear it was liquid. The brush makes application as easy as 1-2-3 and allows you to create two looks -- crisp and smudged with the opposite sponge end.

Day-Time Wedding Makeup

2006-08-25T15:14:00.000-07:00

Even if you’re a no-makeup kinda gal, it’s wise to use makeup to enhance your features if you want to look your best in the photographs and video. Photography, especially flash photography, has a way of flattening features and enhancing all those things you don’t like about your face. So it’s wise to put yourself in the hands of a professional and work with her or him on the look you like. You’ll need less makeup for a day-time wedding than a night-time wedding, but there are still some things to watch out for.

For example, don’t let the artist apply anything too light or shimmery on your brow bone. It will act like a mirror when the flash goes off. Be sure that your mascara isn’t too heavy or clumped. Take the time to separate lashes. In close-ups, you’ll be amazed how the viewer’s eye is drawn to badly applied mascara. Avoid a lip color that is in too much contrast to your skin tone. The camera has a hard time adjusting for contrasts and the result can be muddy.

And speaking of muddy, please, please, please don’t go to the tanning booth. Pale skin looks so much better in photographs. Tanned skin will look leathery and unnatural and set up a contrast with your dress.

One general rule is that if you’re wearing pure white, pinks and lilacs in your makeup will look the most flattering. If you’re in off-white, choose peaches and apricots. Our makeup has a very water resistant rating, so don’t worry about crying it off.

Bridal Makeup.

2006-08-23T18:00:00.000-07:00

Bridal makeup is tricky only because you have to satisfy so many different situations: the bride viewed in real life from close-up and from a distance; the bride viewed in photography from color to black and white; the bride viewed on video tape; in the day-time ceremony and the night-time event.

How do you make sure, if you are that blushing bride, that your makeup works from the moment you step into the car taking you to the ceremony until the time you step back into the car many hours later. The first thing to do is to find a professional makeup artist. Make sure that you look at his or her portfolio so that you can settle on a look you like. Then, at least two weeks before your wedding, go for a rehearsal. Once you're satisfied with the application, have a digital picture taken of yourself and look at it on a screen large enough to simulate the size of a photograph.

A common mistake that brides make is to wear too little makeup. What looks good to you when you look in a hand-mirror may well disappear on camera or from a distance. Mineral makeup is ideal for brides because it doesn’t look like makeup and gives that natural, dewy look that’s so flattering for brides of all ages.

Mature Eyes.

2006-08-14T10:10:00.000-07:00

We talk about “mature eyes” in makeup. A friend of mine once said: “Couldn’t we call them ‘experienced eyes’?” So for all of those experienced eyes out there, here are some tips.

Less is more, especially when it comes to mascara. Too much mascara has an aging effect. When you’re applying your shadow in the crease, do it with the eye open. This way you will be able to see how far you need to go to get the color onto the edge of the brow bone.

Don’t choose colors that are too dark because they have a way of making you look tired. Heavy lining around the eye can have the same effect. Light in the inner corner of the eye will wake your eyes up. A quick was of doing this is to use our Highlighting Pencil (the white or pink side will work) and run it around that inside corner. Blend the edges with your finger. It doesn’t have to be perfect because it will just look like light, not color.

It’s very common as we age to lose the outside third of our brows, so be sure to pay attention to them. Use our Super-Shape Me Eye Brow Kit to shade in the brow and create that missing third. (The kit comes with directions.) You’ll be amazed what it does for your eyes!

Professional Application with Professional Brushes.

2006-08-07T15:43:00.000-07:00

Someone once said that the difference between a great makeup artist and good makeup artist is one more stroke. Makeup is all about blending. Just when you think you’ve blended enough, blend one more time.

This is especially true with eyes. No matter how subtle or vibrant you like to wear your shadows, blending is the key to a perfect result. I was always taught to start off with the lightest shade and work up to the darkest. Now I’m not so sure that’s right. More and more I begin with the darkest shade and work towards the lightest. I find that I get automatic blending this way and I make fewer mistakes.

Of course, you can’t blend if you don’t have the right tools. Good brushes are absolutely key to a good result. You just can’t use that little sponge-tipped thing they gave you in your eye shadow compact. Invest in good brushes, treat them well and they will last you forever. I promise you, you’ll get more joy out of your makeup than you ever have. A good brush has natural bristles and is hand-tied, just like ours.

Widening Close-Set Eyes.

2006-08-04T10:52:00.000-07:00

Makeup is all about illusion. You can actually give the appearance of widening close-set eyes with a few simple tricks. The first one is do NOT pluck your brows back. Brows should begin level with the middle of your nostril. If you pluck them back, they draw attention to themselves.

The way to give the appearance of widening the eye is to widen the arch of the brow. In other words, instead of having it end at the outside edge of the iris, bring it out a little bit. You’ll have to play with this to see what works for you. Then use very light shadows on the inner third of the lid.

Dark shadows will pull the eyes together. Our Highlighter Pencil is wonderful for running around the inside corner of the eye. This is usually the darkest and most recessed area of the face. Put a light in there eyes will look farther apart and you’ll look instantly brighter and more awake. (A great tip for more mature eyes.)

Deep Set Eyes.

2006-08-02T16:46:00.000-07:00

Deep set eyes have a special beauty and need special care when applying shadows. You almost have to think backwards. Usually, deep-set eyes have a prominent brow bone, so the last thing you want to do is to put a light shadow there unless you want the brow to stand out more! (Light colors bring things closer, dark colors recede.)

Brush a medium tone over the brow bone up to the brow. Keep the lid as light as possible. Our shadow Oyster is perfect for this. It has a slight shimmer, which pulls light to the lid. Often, I don’t use an eyeliner because I want to keep the lid as light as possible and enlarge the eye. Liner can close your eye up.

It’s OK to dot liner in between the lashes, but do it very subtly so it just makes the lashes look longer and thicker. Claudia Schiffer has the most deep-set eyes of any model I know. That hasn’t stopped her from being one of the most beautiful women in the world!

Eye Shadow Colors.

2006-07-31T17:09:00.000-07:00

I think that the most common question I’m asked is, What color eye shadow should I wear? I would say the only hard and fast rule is this, “don’t try to match your eye color.” If you do, you will cancel the eye out. Also, if you wear a bright color that overpowers the eye, then that will pull the focus.

If you don’t mind people saying, What great eye shadow as opposed to What beautiful eyes you have, then iridescent is for you. I prefer to find colors that complement the eye and have the effect of making the eye pop.

A color wheel is a useful tool, if you’re just starting. Colors opposite each other on the wheel complement each other. So, brown complements blue, green complements red, etc. In real life, this means that brown will pop a blue eye. Violet and purple look wonderful on a green eye. Brown eyes really have it all. You can wear anything as long as you don’t try to match the brown. You’ll cancel your eye out. I love gold on any eye, but I especially love it on brown eyes. Place it on the lid just above the iris.

When I’m working on a hazel eye, I like to pick one of the colors in the eye and use it as a liner. You can really change the color of the eye that way. Our shadows make wonderful liners – dry or wet. All of our shades have been picked to enhance eye colors – not to ice the cake!

Selecting your Mascara Color.

2006-07-28T17:59:00.000-07:00

What color mascara should you wear? We sell about three times more Black than Black/Brown, but I personally think that black is over-used. Unless you have naturally black lashes, black mascara can look harsh and aging. Although long gorgeous lashes are the crowning glory to beautiful eyes, if they’re piled full of mascara, they become too obvious, take all the focus and look seriously fake.

It’s impossible to apply endless coats of mascara without getting clumps and I think it looks, dare I say it, trashy. The trick to gorgeous lashes is easy. Apply a layer of our PureLash Conditioner. Allow it to dry for 30 seconds. Wipe off your mascara wand and replace it in the tube and twist. Then rock it at the base of the lashes and pull it through to the tips. Before it’s dry, add another coat to the lashes on the outside upper corner. This will give the eye a lift. Pinch off any large clumps with your fingers and separate lashes with a Spooley or a dry mascara wand.

And don’t be wedded to black. Black/Brown is softer and looks more natural. It’s a nice trick to brush the tips of lashes with another color. Try our Teal, Navy or Wine.

Love your Lashes.

2006-07-26T17:53:00.000-07:00

Lashes have a tough life. We would never treat our hair the way we do our lashes. Apart from the mascara we use every day – many of which contain shellac and petroleum that dries lashes out – we don’t think of conditioning them they way we do our hair. So they dry out and break and rarely reach their full potential in length.

I swear by a coating of our PureLash Conditioner. It keeps lashes soft, conditions them so they grow as long as possible and is a fabulous base for mascara. You’ll find that you have to use less mascara because the lashes have been primed before you apply it, so they look longer and thicker and are much happier.

We have many customers who had given up wearing mascara because of sensitivities before they found ours. We’ve not only taken out the harsh chemicals but we’ve also added conditioners and wheat protein to help curl. Our PureLash Lengthening Mascara even contains cellulose fibers to add extra length and thickness.

Mascara & Bacteria.

2006-07-24T09:25:00.000-07:00

If you have your makeup done professionally, never let the artist apply mascara on you from a tester that still has its wand. This may seem drastic, but you don’t know where that wand has been! A conscientious professional will cut off the wand and use disposable brushes. She will also never double-dip.

Why is this so important? We all have bacteria that live in our lashes. We live harmoniously with them provided they don’t get out of control. Every time you use mascara, you take off some of those bacteria and put them in a dark warm environment hospitable to bacteria - the mascara tube. Eventually, their numbers will break down the preservatives. So don’t keep your mascara longer than three months.

Professionally, if someone comes at you with a mascara tester with questionable history, ask the artist if she would mind taking a new one from stock and using disposable brushes on you, or buy a mascara from her and ask her to use that one. Ask for our PureLash Lengthening Mascara in Jet Black, Black/Brown, Teal, Wine or Navy.

Eyebrow Care.

2006-07-19T17:51:00.000-07:00

Most makeup artists will tell you that eyebrows are the most important feature on the face, and I agree. Eyebrows frame the eye and balance the entire face. Kevin Aucoin showed us that he could change someone’s complete look by changing her brows.

The classic brow – the shape that suits almost everyone – is this: Imagine a vertical line drawn from the middle of your nostril up towards your brow. That’s where it begins. The brow arches at the outside edge of the iris. Then hold a brush diagonally from the corner of your nose to the corner of your eye and to your brow. That’s where the brow ends.

I find that powder looks more natural than pencil so I choose a color (a shade lighter for dark hair or a shade or two darker for light hair) and apply it with our Eye Liner and Brow Brow brush. Then I hold the brow in place with our Brow Fix.

Our Super-Shape Me Eyebrow kits make the perfect brow so simple. Two powders to choose from, a wax to hold brows in place and even a yellow cream-to-powder eye base to take away any redness. Included is a pair of tweezers and two brushes. It doesn’t get any better than that!

Rosacea.

2006-07-14T12:38:00.000-07:00

Rosacea is one of the easiest things for minerals to cover. Forget about the days when green was recommended to cover redness. All that did was to leave you with green to cover or a ghostly grayness. Neutralizing colors like this works on an artist’s canvass but not on the human skin. In the mineral world, yellow neutralizes red.

If your rosacea is very pronounced, you may need to use two colors. First, choose a yellow base with about the same depth as your skin color and pick up some of the powder with our flocked sponge. Apply it in a rocking motion as you press it onto your skin. Then, using a mineral base that matches your skin tone, brush it all over your face.

Yellow bases we recommend are Warm Silk, Warm Sienna or Golden Glow. Minerals cover so well that you may not need to use two bases. Choose your complexion color, brush it over your face and then add more minerals to the red area with our flocked sponge. No more rosacea!

Covering Tattoos.

2006-07-10T17:19:00.000-07:00

Ever wish you hadn’t had that tattoo put on your shoulder? Help is at hand, especially if you’re a bride and want to wear strapless.

First, find a shade of our Disappear and a mineral powder that closely match your skin. We have five shades of Disappear from which to choose. Then, with our Camouflage brush, smooth on a thin layer over the tattoo. Let it dry for a moment, then smooth on another layer. With our flocked sponge, pick up some of the powder and press it onto the tattoo. Repeat the process if you need more coverage.

You will still sometimes see a blue shadow coming through. I find that pressing some blush like our Copper Wind will usually neutralize the shadow. If you need to, you can add another layer of mineral powder.

Remember that no camouflage is perfect when examined close-up, but since people usually look at you from a distance of about three feet, this method will disguise the distraction enough so that no one will notice it.

Hyperpigmentation.

2006-07-07T16:58:00.000-07:00

I think hyperpigmentation (brown spots, and in a larger form known as melasma) is the most difficult thing to cover. Somehow, it always manages to bleed through whatever you put over it. You’ll have to try several methods to see what works for you. Here are some of them.

1. Sometimes just a layer of minerals will be enough to disguise it so that it isn’t the first thing someone notices. You can also try putting Amazing Base on as a wash. Spritz our flocked sponge with one of our facial sprays and then pick up the loose powder. Smooth it over your skin and wait for it to dry. Then brush some dry minerals on top.

2. Match a Disappear to your skin shade and apply it with our Camouflage brush. Then stipple Amazing Base or PurePressed Base on top. If there’s still some of the monster shining through, brush a blush like Copper Wind on top. The orange color with usually neutralize the grey shadow.

3. Apply Enlighten Concealer over the pigmentation with our Camouflage brush. You don’t need to apply too much, then pick up some powder with our flocked sponge and stipple it over the area.

Disguising Gray Circles.

2006-06-30T09:18:00.000-07:00

Were you born with gray circles all the way around your eyes? They’re really difficult to cover, aren’t they? I have a method that usually works.

I use our Enlighten concealer, which has a medium orange color. With our Camouflage brush, I pick up a small amount of product and pat it under the eye, making sure I get underneath the lashes. Then I pat it onto the lid. I add another thin layer if I think I need it. It takes very little product to make a difference.

Skin isn’t a piece of plastic - it’s more like fabric. So concealer covers better if you use criss-cross motions to fill in the weave of the skin. I like to use a mineral powder that's slightly lighter than the skin tone and pat it over the concealer. Usually, this does the trick.

People who’ve been putting up with circles like this from childhood are suddenly smiling!

Choosing Your Concealer.

2006-06-27T17:43:00.000-07:00

Our under-eye concealers, Circle\Delete #1, #2 and #3, not only cover but also contain ingredients that condition the under-eye area. I always use our Camouflage brush because it lets me get into the most recessed area of the face, which is the inner corner of the eye where it meets the bridge of the nose. It also lets me get close to the lower lashes. I believe it’s better to cover the whole of the under-eye area, not just the circle.

Circle\Delete gives you two colors, so blend a color that matches your skin tone if you’re just covering a circle. If you want to pull the under-eye area out, then use a shade lighter than your skin tone. If you’re puffy under the eye, then blend a color that’s darker than your skin tone. Use a lighter color on the two outside corners and gradiate the color darker as you cover the puff. Light colors bring things forward. Dark colors make things recede.

Camouflaging Circles.

2006-06-20T08:56:00.000-07:00

Under eye circles are second only to finding the right base shade in terms of cosmetic challenges. And it isn’t only women. Men are just as distressed about them. To cover circles the most effectively, you first have to decide what the color of the circle is.

Circles are caused by a number of different factors – hyperpigmentation (this can be brown or grey depending on your hereditary), allergies (grey, blue, purple), toxins (grey, blue), lack of sleep (grey), or skin thinning (usually purple/red - the color of the capillaries that show through the skin.) Circles can even be shadows from a slipped fat pad. There isn’t much that a concealer can do about that!

Once you’ve determined the color then you’re ready to try the right color. Yellow generally conceals red and purple. Peach is very effective on brown, grey, and blue. Try our Circle\Delete #1 for yellow and #2 for peach.

Ruby Red Lips.

2006-06-14T15:28:00.000-07:00

Really, anyone can wear red! And since red is such a fashion color, even in summer, be brave and find the right shade for you.

If you have warm undertones like me, a blue red will make you look as if you’re ready for the morgue. A yellow red always looks quite good and gives me a boost for the evening. If you have cool undertones, a blue red will do the same for you.
Especially if I’m wearing black, which can make me look tired, red lips brighten my look, add a touch of drama and make my teeth look whiter.

I always put on a layer of pencil first and blot it to remove waxes. Then I use a lip brush to put on a thin layer of lip color. Blot it and add another thin layer. You’ll be amazed how a lip brush helps the color to stay on because it gets into the tiny crevices in the lips. I usually put a dot of clear gloss in the middle of my lower lip and then I feel like a real femme fatal. Somehow it also boosts my confidence.

We have warm reds in Nicole, Holly and a beautiful cool red in Carrie. For cool reds, try Diana, Rachel or Luara.

Choosing the Right Lipstick.

2006-06-09T15:29:00.000-07:00

So how important is the right lip color? After all, when fashion talks about “nude lips,” it isn’t talking about bare lips. It knows that the right lip color completes the look. Just like brows, what you do with your lips can change your look dramatically. The right lip color can make your teeth look whiter, your skin look better and brighten your whole personality. It isn’t an accident that after global or national disasters, the sale of bright colored lipstick increases dramatically.

To find the right color, discover what your undertone is. If you have a yellow undertone, colors with a golden hue will look the best on you. For example, peach rather than pink, brown instead of mauve. If you have cool undertones, you’ll look better in colors that have a blue hue. Pink instead of peach, etc.

How do you know which you are? Try on an orange (warm) and a magenta (cool) lipstick. One of them will look good and the other one will look awful. If they both look good, lucky you; you’re neutral and can wear just about anything.

Our lipsticks contain no FD&C dyes, have an SPF 18 with edible zinc and are so moisturizing that they really are a drink for the lips. You’re bound to find a color that will become your favorite.

Keeping Lips Looking Great.

2006-06-06T09:18:00.000-07:00

Having trouble with the lip color bleeding into the fine lines around your mouth? Try these potential problem solvers. Blend a thin layer of our Absence Oil Control Primer around the outside of the lips. Fill the lips in with pencil, blot, then apply one of our LipColours with our Lip brush. You’ll get just as much color but with less product, if you use a brush. Blot again. If you want to use gloss, just put it in the middle of the lower lip. This gives a very useful effect.

A lot of our customers swear by using Circle\Delete, our under-eye concealer, around the mouth to step feathering. Try applying a thin coat with our Camouflage brush, then fill in with a pencil and layer the LipColour. If you want a very matte look that won’t go anywhere, just fill in with one of our pencils and blot. That will remove the surface waxes.

Finding the Perfect Lip Color.

2006-05-31T17:09:00.000-07:00

So what is the best neutral color for your lips? It’s easy to see. Pull down your lower lip to expose that delicate membrane. That’s the color.

Finding the right color is important because you can then choose a pencil that you can use as a base under all your lip colors and glosses. I find, for me, that our Terra-cotta pencil is my perfect neutral and I use it to shape my lips and fill them in with the pencil. It not only evens out the color of my lips, but whatever shade I put on top of it now has a firm base so colors last much longer. Yes, I even put it under reds.

My favorite lip look--not just for me but almost anyone I make up--is to fill them in with a pencil and put a gloss on top. I love the way the light passes through the gloss, hits the pencil base and reflects back. It’s so much more interesting than a flat color. It’s also more youthful, since matte is aging. To find your perfect neutral pencil start out by trying our Terra-Cotta, Spice, Nutmeg and Nude.

About jane iredale Base - pt. II.

2006-05-25T10:40:00.000-07:00

It’s so much easier to choose the right base shade with minerals than with any other foundation. Minerals interact with light in a way that scatters it to create diffusion. The light even bounces off the skin and melds with your natural color. That’s why you’ll never see where your base begins and ends.

Unlike talc-based makeup that covers by layering product, minerals cover by illusion. The interaction with light allows very little product to be used, so your skin always looks like your own skin - only better.

The first thing our customers generally say when they begin to wear minerals is that they feel weightless. That’s because so little product is needed to obtain really meaningful coverage. One of the benefits is that the skin is allowed to breathe and function normally, resulting in a skin that not only looks healthier but actually is healthier.

About jane iredale Base.

2006-05-22T12:20:00.000-07:00

The number one problem women have with makeup is choosing the right base shade. That’s because most of the time you’re trying to do it in artificial light. My advice is to make sure that you always find a professional who has access to daylight and the patience to try a number of colors on you.

The best place to try a shade is on the jaw line. You’re looking for a color that blends the neck and face together. If the color disappears, then it’s the right color. If you’re trying to do this alone, try it on the cheekbone. It’s easiest to see it here.

If your face is darker than your neck, don’t worry if the shade that blends the two together appears to make you look pale. You can always build color with a bronzer. It will look much more natural than going with a darker shade and appearing as though your head belongs on another body.