Do Ocean Waves Really Travel in Sets of 7?

Eli MacKinnon

Surf’s up, bro – but why? Maybe you heard it from a beach bum with a physics hobby, maybe you heard it from an ancient mariner having a moment of clarity on shore leave, or maybe you heard it from your dad on vacation. In all cases, the claim usually goes something like this: Ocean waves travel in groups of seven, and the seventh wave is the biggest of the bunch.

As would be expected with such a motley group of purveyors, this sea yarn turns out to be well-meaning but basically false. The short answer for why it’s false is that you just can’t predict the motion of the great wide ocean that easily. The short answer for why it’s sort of true is that, well, sometimes you almost can.

To understand why waves don’t neatly adhere to received wisdom, you have to follow them to their source. Contrary to another widespread fallacy, the formation of waves has nothing to do with the moon (unlike the rise and fall of the tide). The ocean surface waves that we see rolling onto the beach are caused by one thing: wind.

Groundhogs Day

StormFax Weather Almanac

Copyright © 1996-2012 STORMFAX, Inc.In 1723, the Delaware Indians settled Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania as a campsite halfway between the Allegheny and the Susquehanna Rivers.  The town is 90 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, at the intersection of Route 36 and Route 119.  The Delawares considered groundhogs honorable ancestors.  According to the original creation beliefs of the Delaware Indians, their forebears began life as animals in “Mother Earth” and emerged centuries later to hunt and live as men.

The name

Punxsutawney

comes from the Indian name for the location

“ponksad-uteney” which means “the town of the sandflies.”

The name

woodchuck

comes from the Indian legend of “Wojak,

the groundhog” considered by them to be their ancestral grandfather.

When German settlers arrived in the 1700s, they brought a tradition known as Candlemas Day, which has an early origin in the pagan celebration of Imbolc.  It came at the mid-point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox.  Superstition held that if the weather was fair, the second half of Winter would be stormy and cold.  For the early Christians in Europe, it was the custom on Candlemas Day for clergy to bless candles and distribute them to the people in the dark of Winter.  A lighted candle was placed in each window of the home.  The day’s weather continued to be important.  If the sun came out February 2, halfway between Winter and Spring, it meant six more weeks of wintry weather.

The earliest American reference to Groundhog Day can be found at the Pennsylvania Dutch Folklore Center at Franklin and Marshall College:

February 4, 1841

- from Morgantown, Berks County (Pennsylvania) storekeeper James Morris’ diary…”Last Tuesday, the 2nd, was Candlemas day, the day on which, according to the Germans, the Groundhog peeps out of his winter quarters and if he sees his shadow he pops back for another six weeks nap, but if the day be cloudy he remains out, as the weather is to be moderate.”

According to the old English saying:

If Candlemas be fair and bright,
Winter has another flight.
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,
Winter will not come again.

From Scotland:

If Candlemas Day is bright and clear,
There’ll be two winters in the year.

From Germany:

For as the sun shines on Candlemas Day,
So far will the snow swirl until May.
For as the snow blows on Candlemas Day,
So far will the sun shine before May.

And from America:

If the sun shines on Groundhog Day;
Half the fuel and half the hay.

If the sun made an appearance on Candlemas Day, an animal would cast a shadow, thus predicting six more weeks of Winter.  Germans watched a badger for the shadow.  In Pennsylvania, the groundhog, upon waking from mid-Winter hibernation, was selected as the replacement.

Pennsylvania’s official celebration of Groundhog Day began on February 2nd, 1886 with a proclamation in The Punxsutawney Spiritby the newspaper’s editor, Clymer Freas: “Today is groundhog day and up to the time of going to press the beast has not seen its shadow.”  The groundhog was given the name “Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators, and Weather Prophet Extraordinary” and his hometown thus called the “Weather Capital of the World.”  His debut performance: no shadow – early Spring.

The legendary first trip to Gobbler’s Knob was made the following year.

Since the 1993 release of the film Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray as a TV weatherman (who wakes up and it’s Groundhog Day over and over again!) and Andie MacDowell as his puzzled producer, attendance at the real event has expanded.  In 1997, there were 35,000 visitors in Punxsutawney, five times the Jefferson County town’s 6,700 population.

The Groundhog Day festivities on February 2, 1992 were joined by Bill Murray studying for his role in the movie.  Then, Columbia Pictures set out to recreate the Punxsutawney Groundhog Day down to the smallest detail.  There were, however, many changes made.

Columbia Pictures decided to film the movie in a location more accessible to a major metropolitan center.  The highways in and around Punxsutawney were few, so Woodstock, Illinois was chosen as the site.  Unfortunately, Woodstock’s landscape doesn’t have Pennsylvania’s scenic rolling hills.  Nevertheless, adjustments were made for the production.  The actual Gobbler’s Knob is a wooded hill with a beautiful view; the Gobbler’s Knob in the movie is moved to the town square.  The Punxsutawney Gobbler’s Knob was recreated to scale in Woodstock’s town square based on detailed notes and videos the crew made on it’s visit to Punxsutawney.    [Photo: © Columbia Pictures]

The movie’s script was changed to include the elaborate ceremony of the Inner Circle on Groundhog Day.  The original groundhog cast for the movie was considered to be too small.

Some of the store names in Punxsutawney were used in the movie, such as The Smart Shop and Stewart’s Drug Store.  Punxsutawney’s police cars were also recreated for the movie.  The groundhog-head trash cans and Groundhog Festival flags that line the streets of Punxsutawney were displayed.  Folks traveling to Punxsutawney to see the “Punxsutawney” they saw in the movie wonder why it looks “so different, yet seems so similar.”

The groundhog, also known as a woodchuck (Marmota monax), is a member of the squirrel family.  Groundhogs in the wild eat succulent green plants, such as dandelion, clover, and grasses.

According to handlers John Griffiths and Ben Hughes, Phil weighs 15 pounds and thrives on dog food and ice cream in his climate-controlled home at the Punxsutawney Library.

Up on Gobbler’s Knob, Phil is placed in a heated burrow underneath a simulated tree stump on stage before being pulled out at 7:25 a.m. to make his prediction.

How Accurate Are Punxsutawney Phil’s Groundhog Day Forecasts?

Remy Melina

As the legend goes, if Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow on Feb. 2, six more weeks of winter weather lay ahead; no shadow indicates an early spring. Phil, a groundhog, has been forecasting the weather on Groundhog Day for more than 120 years, but just how good is he at his job?

Not very, it turns out.

Punxsutawney Phil was first tasked with predicting the upcoming spring weather in 1887, and the process hasn’t changed much since. The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, of Punxsutawney, Penn., takes care of Phil year-round, and on each Feb. 2, members of the club’s Inner Circle rouse Phil at sunrise to see if he casts a shadow. (Contrary to popular belief, Phil doesn’t actually have to see his shadow — he just has to cast one to make his wintery prophecy .)

Why Does Hair Change as You Age?

Mary Beth Griggs

It’s a situation replayed constantly in hair salons across the country. A client comes in whose long-time hairdresser notices that something is a little bit different. The client’s hair texture has changed, becoming more curly (or straight) since the first time they walked in the door years ago.

But why the shift? Many stylists, and even some doctors, say the change is driven by changing hormones throughout a person’s life, especially during events like pregnancy and menopause.

Unfortunately this hypothesis hasn’t gone through rigorous scientific testing. Lynne Goldberg, Director of the Hair Clinic at Boston University School of Medicine, said that while she has seen hair texture change over time in patients, she is unaware of any studies that look into the reasons for a gradual change in hair texture in otherwise healthy patients.

Sudden changes in hair texture, however, can indicate more serious problems, some of which are related to hormone shifts. “I think it is well known that thyroid disease can change hair texture,” Goldberg said. Abrupt changes in hair texture, especially growing finer or more brittle, could indicate underlying conditions like hypothyroidism, especially when accompanied with other symptoms. Other documented causes of hair change are associated with HIV infection and chronic malnutrition, during which hair can grow in straighter and weaker.

Quirky Discipline Rules That Work

By Barbara Rowley

I’ve made a lot of bad rules in the decade I’ve been a mom, from irrational threats (“No graham crackers in the house ever again if you eat them in the living room even one more time”) to forbidding human nature (“You may not fight with your sister”). But occasionally I’ve come up with rules that work better than I’d ever contemplated. These made-up rules have an internal logic that defies easy categorization, but their clarity and enforceability make them work. Several of them are not, technically, rules at all, but declarations of policy or fact. And they’re all easy to remember. A few personal favorites, plus those of other moms:

Rule #1: You can’t be in the room when I’m working unless you work, too

Goal: Get your child to help, or stop bugging you, while you do chores

It might seem odd, but I don’t mind doing laundry, cleaning floors, or really any kind of housework. But I do mind my kids, oblivious to the fact that my arms are full of their underwear, asking me to find their missing doll shoe or do a puzzle with them. Until recently, this was a source of great frustration, especially when our household grew to five kids when my husband, Taylor, and I became temporary foster parents for two months.

I tried to explain to my expanded brood that if they helped me fold laundry, we could do something together sooner. But they knew I’d be available anyway if I finished folding myself, so the argument wasn’t compelling.

And then one day, as my oldest foster daughter sat and watched me work, asking me favors and waiting for me to be done, I came up with a rule that takes into account two important facts about kids:

* They actually want to be with you as much as possible.

* You can’t force them to help you in any way that is truly helpful.

I played fact one against fact two and told her that she didn’t have to help me but couldn’t just sit and watch. She had to go elsewhere. Given a choice between being with me and folding laundry or not being with me at all, she took option one.

Why it works: I didn’t care which she chose. And it was her choice, so it gave her control even as it took it away.

No more late nights

Rule #2: I don’t work past 8 p.m.

Goal: Regular bedtimes and time off for you

You can’t just announce a rule to your husband and kids that says, “Bedtime has to go really smoothly so I can get a break at the end of the day.” It won’t happen. But if you flip the problem and make a rule about you instead of telling everyone what they have to do, it all falls neatly  – and miraculously  – into place.

When this occurred to me, back when my oldest was 6 and my youngest was nearly 2, I announced to Anna and Taylor that the U.S. Department of Labor had just created a new rule and I was no longer allowed to do any kind of mom jobs past 8:00 in the evening. I would gladly read books, play games, listen to stories of everyone’s day, give baths  – the whole mother package  – before then. Then I held firm  – I acted as if it were out of my hands. Sort of like Cinderella and midnight.

Suddenly, my 6-year-old (and my husband) developed a new consciousness of time. My daughter actually rushed to get ready for bed just after dinner so that we could have lots of books and time together before I was “off.” My husband, realizing that if things dragged past 8:00 he’d have to face putting both girls to sleep himself, became more helpful. Anna’s now 11, and my hours have been extended, but the idea that I’m not endlessly available has been preserved and integrated into our family routine.

Why it works: You’re not telling anyone else what to do. The rule is for you, so you have only yourself to blame if it’s not enforced.

Rule #3: You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit

Goal: No more haggling  – over which pretzel has more salt or who gets their milk in the prized red cup and who in the cursed green, or which cast member of Blue’s Clues adorns whose paper plate

My friend Joyce, director of our town’s preschool, told us about this terrific rule, now repeated by everyone I know on playgrounds and at home. Not only does it have a boppy rhythm that makes it fun to say, but it does good old “Life isn’t fair” one better by spelling out both the essential truth of life’s arbitrary inequities and the only acceptable response to the world’s unfairness: You don’t throw a fit.

When I first heard this, I was skeptical. It seemed too simple. But to my utter surprise, not only did it do the trick but kids seemed to rally around it almost with relief. They must have seen that if it applied to them today it might apply to someone else tomorrow.

Why it works: It’s irrefutable  – it almost has the ring of runic or prehistoric truth to it  – and rather than focusing on an abstract notion like “fairness,” it speaks directly to the situation at hand.

Rule #4: Take that show on the road

Goal: Peace and quiet

Is it just me or does someone saying “one-strawberry, two-strawberry, three-strawberry” over and over in a squeaky voice make you want to smash some strawberries into a pulpy mess? I want my kids to be gleefully noisy when they need and want to be. But I don’t feel it’s necessary that I be their audience/victim past a few minutes or so, or that I should have to talk (shout?) over their, um, joyous clamor when I’m on the phone. So once I’ve shown attention adequate to their display, I tell them that they’re free to sing, bang, chant, or caterwaul to their hearts’ content, just not here. The same goes for whining, tantrums, and generic pouting.

For the irrational and long-winded whining jags sometimes used by her 4-year-old son, my friend Denise has turned this rule to a pithy declaration: “I’m ready to listen when you’re ready to talk.” She then leaves the room.

Why it works: It gives children a choice rather than a prohibition and does so without rejecting them.

No money, no problems

Rule #5: We don’t argue about money

Goal: Short-circuit begging and pleading for stuff

This rule has to be enforced consistently to work, but the basic deal is that you can tell your child yes or no on any requested purchase, but you don’t discuss it. If your child protests, simply repeat, calmly, like a mantra, that you won’t argue about money. The key to success is that you have to have the courage of your convictions and not argue. Thus the calm repetition.

It cuts both ways, though: When your kids want to spend their “own” money, point out potential mistakes and give advice on the purchase if you’d like, but at the end of the day, don’t overrule them unless it’s a matter of health or safety. After all, you don’t argue about money. They may make some bad choices, but they’ll learn. And you’ll all enjoy shopping together a lot more.

Why it works: It shifts the focus from the whined-for treat to financial policy. You’re almost changing the topic on them, no longer debating why they should or shouldn’t have gum or some plastic plaything and, instead, invoking a reasonable-sounding family value.

Rule #6: I can’t understand you when you speak like that

Goal: Stopping whining, screaming, general rudeness

This one requires almost religious consistency of application to work effectively. But, essentially, you simply proclaim incomprehension when your child orders (rather than asks) you to do something, whines, or otherwise speaks to you in a way you don’t like. Whispering this helps; it takes the whole thing down a notch on the carrying-on scale. This is a de-escalation tool, so calmly repeat the rule a few times and don’t get lured into raising your voice. A child who’s whining or being rude is clearly seeking attention and drama, so use this as a way to provide neither.

Why it works: It empowers your child by suggesting he has something valuable to say (if he says it nicely) and allows you to completely invalidate (i.e., ignore) the rude presentation.

Rule #7: There’s no such thing as boredom

Goal: Prevent your child from saying “I’m bored”; teach her to entertain herself

A friend of mine says this is one of the few things he got right with his kids. The first time his older daughter claimed she was bored he simply denied that the thing existed. Now he sometimes adds: “There’s no such thing as boredom, only failure of the imagination” or “…only mental laziness.” Surprisingly he’s never gotten the “There is too boredom!” argument, only an exasperated “Da-ad.” Regardless of the phrasing, the result is the same: The burden of amusement lands directly on your child, which is precisely where you want it.

Why it works: By the time your kids have figured out the puzzle of how something that exists can also not exist, they won’t be bored. Also, it changes the terms of debate, from a challenge for you (list all my toys, then cave in and let me watch TV) to one for them. Besides  – if your child learns how to entertain herself, there truly is no such thing as boredom. And that’s a gift that will last all her life.

Contributing editor Barbara Rowley is searching for rules that will work with Smokey, the family dog.

Why Kids Lie – Age by Age

Honest advice for dealing with your child’s lies

By Juliette Guilbert, Parenting

“Daddy puts on your bras sometimes,” my then 4-year-old said nonchalantly as I tried on lingerie in a department store dressing room.

“Excuse me? When?” I asked, astonished.

“When you’re asleep,” she replied — and proceeded to describe how, early Saturday mornings, he’d slip a bra over his T-shirt and then jump on our mini-trampoline. She stuck to her tale so adamantly that later that day, I sheepishly asked my schoolteacher husband if he’d ever jokingly held one of my lacy underthings up to his chest (he hadn’t).

We laughed, but I felt unsettled. Lying to avoid punishment or to get an extra piece of pie — that I could understand. But Lillian was lying frequently, for kicks, and she’d never admit that a made-up story wasn’t true. Should I insist on honesty, I wondered, lest she develop into a pathological liar? Or let it slide, to avoid crushing her creativity?

The latter, apparently: The experts I quizzed about Lillian’s tale were unfazed. “There’s nothing wrong with her telling it,” says Michael Brody, M.D., a child psychiatrist in Potomac, Maryland. “Very young kids don’t know the difference between truth and fiction.”

In fact, this type of lying can be a sign of good things. “Preschoolers with higher IQ scores are more likely to lie,” says Angela Crossman, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, who researched the subject. Early lying proficiency may also be linked with good social skills in adolescence.

Of course, not all kids’ lies are trivial incidents you can just laugh off — and you do want to raise a child who values honesty. Knowing the types of untruths kids tell at each stage, and why, can help you gently guide your own toward a level of truthfulness that’s appropriate for his age.

Toddlers: first fibs
It’s usually pretty obvious when one of Eric Lutzker’s 2-year-old twin boys, Merce and Jacob, has a dirty diaper. The trick is determining which one. “If you ask them, they’ll each simultaneously say the other’s name,” says the Seattle dad. “They don’t want to go through the rigmarole of a diaper change, so they lie about it.”

Such self-serving fibs are the first kinds of lies many young toddlers try out. As any mom of a toddler or preschooler can tell you, kids as young as 3 — sometimes even 2 — will tell very simple lies, denying they’ve done something or in order to gain something for themselves.

It doesn’t make sense to punish toddlers for truth bending, since they don’t get that what they’re doing is wrong. “If a two-year-old pulls the cat’s tail and says that her imaginary friend did it, the best response is to say, ‘The cat has feelings, too,’ ” says Elizabeth Berger, M.D., a child psychiatrist and author of Raising Kids With Character. “Don’t get into a wrangle to get the child to admit that she was the one.” An even better strategy is to avoid the showdown in the first place. “Rather than asking ‘Did you break the vase?’ say, ‘Look, the vase got broken,’ ” says Dr. Brody. “If you make an angry accusation, you’ll get a lie.”

Preschoolers: small people, tall tales
My daughter’s story about her dad wearing a bra is typical of 3- to 5-year-olds’ freewheeling relationship with reality. This is the age of invisible friends, horned monsters, and talking rainbows. Though she recently outgrew them, 4-year-old Lucy Sterba of El Cerrito, California, basked last year in the companionship of not one, but eight imaginary sisters, each with a name, birth date, and backstory. “The sisters did things Lucy couldn’t do, like wear pink dresses every day,” says her dad, Chris.

Preschoolers’ tall tales can be pure play, or sometimes wishful thinking (Lucy’s pretend sisters never had to eat mushrooms the way Lucy does, her mom notes). And it’s not unusual for young kids to insist, as Lucy did, that their fantasy world is real. “It’s not really a lie,” says Dr. Berger. “What your child indicates when he says ‘He’s real’ is the tremendous colorfulness, prominence, and importance of his imaginary friends.”

If a particular tall tale troubles you, it’s important to keep things in perspective. “If a child seems happy and has realistic relationships with the important people in his life, I would not be worried about his fantasizing. That’s what children did before there was TV,” Dr. Berger says. Remember that what seems outlandish to adults may simply be a child’s way of processing new ideas. After Lucy learned that her grandfather had died before she was born, several of her “sisters” suddenly died, too. “She would talk about it in a very matter-of-fact way,” Sterba says. “Our friends started to joke that there must be an epidemic.”

Schoolkids: they’ve got their reasons
Shea McMahon, 8, and his brother Jack, 6, of Austin, Texas, both denied pilfering their sister’s hospital newborn bracelet from a keepsake box. “I yelled and cajoled and said no Sunday breakfast for either one until they confessed,” says Shannon McMahon. A few minutes later, Jack owned up. But when his mom asked for details, he panicked. “Finally, he admitted, ‘I got nothin’. I just wanted you guys to stop asking,’ ” she says. Then Shea, the real perp, burst into tears.

Jack’s attempt to take the rap for his big brother signals an important developmental step: the ability to tell a white (or “prosocial”) lie — one that benefits someone else or is told to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. “It actually shows a bit of social awareness and sensitivity,” says Crossman.

But as Shea’s fib by omission shows, 5- to 8-year-olds also still occasionally resort to the not-so-white lie. Kids this age do so for all sorts of understandable, even forgivable, reasons — for example, they’re afraid of how disappointed you’ll be or the punishment they’ll get, even because they’re pressed beyond their capabilities. (If, say, a kid’s having trouble with math, he might insist he has no math homework.) Before you send your child to his room or take away his TV privileges for the day, try to find out what drove him to lie, and take his reasons into consideration.

Tweens: growing fast and stretching the truth
When we had a Halloween party for my older daughter, Aurora’s, third-grade class, my husband made up a ghost story about “the rundown house up the block.” At the end, the girls cried, “Can we go see it?” At 9, they’d developed concrete ideas of truth and falsehood but were still naive about the gray area in between.

And speaking of gray areas, tweens are also apt to gloss over details of their lives they once freely spilled about. Don’t be surprised if your child keeps mum about things she would have shared with you a year or two before, like the latest lunch-table gossip. This new secretiveness isn’t dishonesty or a sign that your child is up to anything wrong. In fact, it reflects her growing maturity. “Kids who tell everything to their parents at age thirteen or fourteen are not growing up,” says Dr. Brody.

Of course, as your child gains more independence, he may take advantage of it by pulling a fast one from time to time. When 9-year-old Joey DeMille of San Diego asked his mother to stop “nagging” him about completing his daily reading log, she agreed to back off and let him take responsibility. “For the entire month of January, I didn’t ask him to show me his log,” she says, and Joey swore that he was filling it in daily. But when the time came to turn in the log, his mother was shocked to discover that it was nearly blank. “He had been lying to me all month long!” she says.

An occasional lie about homework, chores, or toothbrushing, while aggravating, is not unusual at this age. The best response usually is to simply express your displeasure. But if a tween lies chronically, he might need professional assistance to sort things out. “Children who are anxious, who feel that they can’t handle some kind of situation, may lie,” says Dr. Berger. “It could be a sign of any number of stresses that the child is under.” It could also be the sign of a smart kid who finds lying a convenient tactic.

The best way to steer your tween toward greater honesty? Set a good example yourself (no fudging his younger brother’s age to get cheaper movie tickets) and talk to him about how lying can damage your credibility and relationships. “It’s the kind of lesson that doesn’t sink in immediately,” says Crossman. What lesson ever does, especially with kids that age? But chances are your child will grow out of his fibbing — and into an honest-to-goodness adult.

Juliette Guilbert, a mother of two, lives near Seattle and is currently working on a book about kids and drug use.

 

10 Ways to Enjoy Doing Nothing

This life is so short – I hope that everyone can enjoy a little “Down” time!

FOX Health

One morning, nearly 20 years ago, I was lying in bed. It was late. I was supposed to be working, but I seemed glued to the mattress. I hated myself for my laziness. And then, by chance, I picked up a collection of writings by Dr. Samuel Johnson, the 18th-century wit and the compiler of the first comprehensive English dictionary. In the book were excerpts from a weekly column he had written called The Idler, in which the great man celebrated idleness as an aspiration, writing in 1758, “Every man is, or hopes to be, an Idler.”

This was an epiphany for me. Idleness, it seemed, was not bad. It was noble. It was excessive busyness that caused all the problems!

So I got out of bed and started a magazine called The Idler, in order to remind people of the forgotten, simple pleasures of doing nothing. I even wrote books about it. And, yes, you could say that idleness became my life’s work. So, based on all those years of tough-going research, here are my top tips for people who find it difficult to just be.

1. Banish the guilt.
We are all told that we should be terribly busy, so we can’t laze around without that nagging feeling that we need to be getting stuff done. I rejected my guilt upon learning that Europeans in the Middle Ages felt no shame for lolling about. Their favorite philosopher, Aristotle, had praised the contemplative life, and the monks spent a lot of time just praying and chanting. Guilt for doing nothing is artificially imposed on us by a Calvinistic and Puritanical culture that wants us to work hard. When you understand that it hasn’t always been this way, it becomes easier to shake it off.

2. Choose the right role models. 
Most of the great musicians and poets were idlers. So feed yourself a diet of John Lennon, Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, and the like. Carrying a slim volume of verse in your purse or pocket can be therapeutic―something from Keats, who wrote of “evenings steep’d in honied indolence,” or Wordsworth, of course. (What could be more idle than wandering lonely as a cloud?) It’s delightful to read a few lines while you’re on a bus or a train, then stare out the window and ponder their meaning.

3. Sketch a flower.
If you are new to idling and feel compelled to be purposefully occupied, sketching a flower at the kitchen table can be an excellent way to bring some divine contemplation into your life. The act of drawing makes you observe the bloom in a way you never have before. All anxieties fly away as you lose yourself in close study. And at the end of it you have a pretty little sketch.

4. Go bumbling.
Bumbling is a nice word that means “wandering around without purpose.” It was indulged in by the poets of 19th-century Paris. They called themselves flâneurs and were said to have taken tortoises around on leads, which gives you an idea of the tempo of their rambles. Children are good bumblers. Try making a deliberate effort to slow down your walking pace. You’ll find yourself coming alive, and you’ll enjoy simply soaking in the day.

5. Play the ukulele.
The ukulele is the sound of not working. My wife hates it for that very reason: The twang of those strings means that I am not doing something useful around the house. I keep my ukulele in the kitchen and play it at odd moments, like while I’m waiting for the kettle to boil.

6. Bring back Sundays. 
Many religions still observe a Sabbath, whether it’s Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. And for a long time secular society embraced Sundays as a day of rest, too. But now Sundays are as busy and stress-filled as any other day. Having a day of rest was a very practical idea: We were excused from all labor and devoted ourselves to pleasure and family. Take that ancient wisdom to heart and declare at least one day of the week as a do-nothing day. Don’t clean the house or do the laundry; don’t get in the car. Stay home and eat chocolate and drink wine. Be kind to yourself.

7. Lie in a field. 
Doing nothing is profoundly healing―to yourself and to the planet. It is precisely our restless activity that has caused the environmental crisis. So do some good by taking a break from “doing” and go and lie on your back in a field. Listen to the birds and smell the grass.

8. Gaze at the clouds.
Don’t have a field nearby? Doing nothing can easily be dignified by calling it “cloud spotting.” It gives a purpose to your dawdling. Go outside and look up at the ever-changing skies and spot the cirrus and the cumulonimbus.

9. Take a nap.
To indulge in a siesta after lunch is the most wonderful luxury: It softens tempers and guards against grumpiness. Yet our culture has decided that naps are for wimps. A nap is acceptable only if it is called a “power nap”―a short doze that is supposed to return you to the office with more energy to kick some ass. But you should nap, not for the profit of a corporation but for your own health. Research has shown that a daily snooze can reduce the risk of heart attack. And just knowing you’re going to sleep after lunch seems to make the morning less stressful. If curling up in your office isn’t an option, go somewhere quiet, like a church or a park bench, and close your eyes for even just five minutes.

10. Pretend to meditate.
For us westerners, meditation is an accepted way of doing nothing. Tell everyone you’re going to meditate, then go into your bedroom, shut the door, and stare out the window or read or lie down for half an hour. You have excused yourself from household tasks and can indulge in contemplation, reflection, and that underrated pleasure, thinking, without fear of disapproval.