Her podcast is all about living her best possible life. This episode, number 8, actually explains what was going on in her life, soon after, tragedy struck four years ago. Her podcast is called, “Susan Is Suddenly Single.”
Susan S Warner
A Necessary Reflection
In all of our past podcasts, Susan Warner has talked about moving forward, not beyond, when you lose someone you love. To many of Susan’s followers, her confidence and desire to live the best possible life, may seem like she possesses an inner strength that they do not. She stresses that never in this journey has it been entirely easy or uncomplicated.
It’s time that she talked about her past, and what it was like in the early days after the death of her son and then, soon after, the death of her husband. What was she thinking in those days, how did she feel, where did she go, how did she conduct herself?
This information will give her loyal listeners a true understanding of who Susan is, her struggles and triumphs. This podcast will explain the past and give listeners a lens to the journey: the pain, the path to recovery from loss and her transformation. It can serve as a road map to those that have endured and suddenly find themselves afloat alone. This information can be an inspirational exploration to find contentment and personal happiness.
We arrived last week in the South of France for a destination wedding that I performed. This is an exquisite region called “Provence,” where the well-known “Herbes de Provence” come from and where all the essential oils of lavender used for a variety of products are grown and distilled. It is a region with one of the most fragrant olive oils, truffles are so abundant here that they are used in regular dishes turning, for example, scrambled eggs into a delicacy that makes your eyes close in ecstasy.
This is where you can buy the best hot sauce in the world – in my opinion – it’s called Harissa (OK it originally comes from Tunisia!). The finest soaps for the skin, Savon de Marseille, are made in the region. These are all personal treasures I am bringing back to the US. When you taste the tapenade (black olive paste) seasoned with garlic, capers and basil along with the sun-dried tomatoes with truffles and the marinated fresh artichokes, you know what they eat in Heaven.
Considering all this, we wondered why not come back and enjoy it every day. We even explored the possibilities and pondered several ideas. Yes, we could, but as an observant Jew, life isn’t so idyllic. Here, Judaism must be lived in the privacy of your own home. My Star of David pendant must be hidden beneath my shirt and my kippah under a hat or cap. One may think that it is a small price to pay for what the region offers. However, a Jewish doctor had his throat slashed three weeks ago in front of his young children across the street from his hospital. The media barely covered the incident. That is a price I am unwilling to pay.
The US has welcomed me, my Star of David is never a problem and I wear my kippah openly in public. I proudly hold an American passport; I am coming back… with a suitcase filled with treasures.
Marc Philippe is the rabbi at Kodesh House, a grassroots Jewish organization for spirituality, healing, connection and inclusion.
He offers a new and progressive space for people to get in touch with their roots. It is a place to learn, play, grow, transform and experiment while discovering and exploring the wisdom and spirituality of Judaism.
Rabbi Marc Philippe, besides being vegetarian, is also a professional musician, hypnotist, Kabbalist and Yoga enthusiast.
An addictive personality is a set of traits that make you more likely to develop substance use disorder or other addictions. When you have an addictive personality, behaviors that start innocently can spiral out of control.
An addictive personality isn’t a diagnosable condition but recognizing common signs of an addictive personality can help you acknowledge or avoid problems. Read on to see if you recognize these 10 common addictive personality signs.
You’re Impulsive
2/11
Do you often make decisions without thinking about the consequences? Maybe you frequently buy more than you can afford or lose your temper. If you tend to make hasty decisions or feel out of control, you might be impulsive, and impulsivity is a common sign of an addictive personality.
You’re Sensory Seeking
3/11
Seeking out new or intense experiences can lead to a healthy sense of adventure — you may be more likely to travel or try new foods, for example — but it can also be part of an addictive personality.
In a 2015 study, adolescents who were considered sensory seeking were significantly more likely to try addictive substances.
You’re Secretive About Your Behaviors
4/11
It’s normal to want privacy sometimes, but if you’re secretly indulging in behaviors you feel bad about, it may suggest an addictive personality.
Secrecy is a common trait of substance use disorder but secretive behavior can also be a red flag for activities like gambling, shopping, and video games.
You’re a Rebel
5/11
People who march to the beat of their own drums are often natural leaders or artists. Still, non-conformists may also be more likely to engage in risky behaviors.
If you struggle to follow rules — even rules you’ve set for yourself — it may be harder to keep healthy boundaries around addictive behaviors and substances.
You’re Obsessive
6/11
If you obsess over things and have difficulty distracting yourself, you may have more difficulty breaking unhealthy habits, making this an addictive personality trait.
For people with obsessive-compulsive disorder, some estimates put the rate of co-occurring substance use disorder as high as 40%. .
You Have a History of Anxiety or Depression
7/11
People with anxiety or depression are two to three times more likely to have a substance use disorder than the general population.
Anxiety or depression can lead people to use addictive substances to try to control their symptoms – like someone with social anxiety having too many drinks.
You Have Low Self Esteem
8/11
If you feel bad about yourself, you may feel driven to do things to make yourself feel better — even things that aren’t healthy.
A 2014 study found that college students with low self-esteem were at higher risk for internet addiction than the general population.
You’re Reward Driven
9/11
If you have a high risk, high reward attitude, you may be a natural entrepreneur, but you might also have an addictive personality.
People who are reward-motivated may be more likely to engage in risky behaviors. A 2016 study showed cocaine users were more highly motivated to achieve rewards than the general population.
You Have ADHD
10/11
If you have ADHD, you’re two to four times more likely to develop a substance use disorder. The link between substance use disorder and ADHD continues to be studied, but brain differences that affect impulse control and reward systems likely play a role.
You Have a Family History of Addiction
11/11
A family history of addiction is a significant risk factor, and both genetics and environment contribute. If you have family members who struggle with addiction, you might have inherited traits that make you more susceptible.
For example, children of alcoholics are four times more likely to develop substance use disorder than the general population
1. Cucumbers contain most of the vitamins you need every day, just one cucumber contains Vitamin B1, Vitamin B2, Vitamin B3, Vitamin B5, Vitamin B6, Folic Acid, Vitamin C, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Potassium and Zinc.
2. Feeling tired in the afternoon, put down the caffeinated soda and pick up a cucumber. Cucumbers are a good source of B vitamins and Carbohydrates that can provide that quick pick-me-up that can last for hours.
3. Tired of your bathroom mirror fogging up after a shower? Try rubbing a cucumber slice along the mirror, it will eliminate the fog and provide a soothing, spa-like fragrance.
4. Are grubs and slugs ruining your planting beds? Place a few slices in a small pie tin and your garden will be free of pests all season long. The chemicals in the cucumber react with the aluminum to give off a scent undetectable to humans but drive garden pests crazy and make them flee the area.
5. Looking for a fast and easy way to remove cellulite before going out or to the pool? Try rubbing a slice or two of cucumbers along your problem area for a few minutes, the phytochemicals in the cucumber cause the collagen in your skin to tighten, firming up the outer layer and reducing the visibility of cellulite. Works great on wrinkles too!!!
6. Want to avoid a hangover or terrible headache? Eat a few cucumber slices before going to bed and wake up refreshed and headache free. Cucumbers contain enough sugar, B vitamins and electrolytes to replenish essential nutrients the body lost, keeping everything in equilibrium, avoiding both a hangover and headache!!
7. Looking to fight off that afternoon or evening snacking binge? Cucumbers have been used for centuries and often used by European trappers, traders and explores for quick meals to thwart off starvation.
8. Have an important meeting or job interview and you realize that you don’t have enough time to polish your shoes? Rub a freshly cut cucumber over the shoe, its chemicals will provide a quick and durable shine that not only looks great but also repels water.
9. Out of WD 40 and need to fix a squeaky hinge? Take a cucumber slice and rub it along the problematic hinge, and voila, the squeak is gone!
10. Stressed out and don’t have time for massage, facial or visit to the spa? Cut up an entire cucumber and place it in a boiling pot of water, the chemicals and nutrients from the cucumber will react with the boiling water and be released in the steam, creating a soothing, relaxing aroma that has been shown the reduce stress in new mothers and college students during final exams.
11. Just finish a business lunch and realize you don’t have gum or mints? Take a slice of cucumber and press it to the roof of your mouth with your tongue for 30 seconds to eliminate bad breath, the phytochemicals will kill the bacteria in your mouth responsible for causing bad breath.
12. Looking for a ‘green’ way to clean your taps, sinks or stainless steel? Take a slice of cucumber and rub it on the surface you want to clean, not only will it remove years of tarnish and bring back the shine, but it won’t leave streaks and won’t harm you fingers or fingernails while you clean.
13. Using a pen and made a mistake? Take the outside of the cucumber and slowly use it to erase the pen writing, also works great on crayons and markers that the kids have used to decorate the walls!!
John Grisham Is Still Battling His Southern Demons
By David Marchese photograph by Mamadi Doumbouya
There are very few constants in life — and it sure feels as if the number is shrinking — but one thing readers of popular fiction can count on is that every year will bring a new John Grisham book, or two. With his latest, “Sparring Partners,”the prolific and megaselling novelist is offering his humble version of a changeup. The book, his 47th, is the 67-year-old’s first collection of novellas. It includes three separate stories, one of which features his old standby Southern-lawyer character Jake Brigance. But while his professional life has been marked by a certain steadfastness, his personal and political evolution wasn’t quite so smooth. “I’ve come a long way,” says Grisham, who was a lawyer and a politician before turning to writing. “Once I became a lawyer, most of my clients were poor people, working people, minority people who had no money. We were on one side of the street. On the other side of the street were the people with money. Real quick I realized where I stood in life and where I was going to be in life.”
With the exception of “Strawberry Moon,” the material in the new book feels to me like the kind of plots and subject matter that you normally render at full length. And, to be crass, I’ve also heard that novellas don’t sell as well as novels. So why opt for the form? Over the years, these stories keep lying around, and I realized that the birthdays are piling up and the stories are not being written. So, I said, OK, I’m going to pick out my three favorites and finish them. I’m tired of thinking about them. I emailed Stephen King and said, “You’ve done several collections of novellas; how did it work?” He said he also had a lot of stories, you’re not going to be able to write them all as novels, some don’t work as short stories, so you do something in the middle. That’s how it all came to pass. I can play around with a baseball book or a football book or short stories or a kids’ book in my spare time, but I know my readers want the legal thriller every fall.
When you know you’ve got to deliver a big new legal thriller every fall — and in between you’re often writing those other books — are you ever able to abandon an idea that isn’t working? Or do you just have to find a way to make it work?
I’ve never had the situation where I wrote myself into a corner I couldn’t get out of. At the same time, with every book I reach a point late in the game where I have doubts about the story and get nervous, even frightened, about Who’s going to believe this stuff? I’m going through it right now with “The Boys From Biloxi.” My goal each year with each legal thriller is to write about 100,000 words. That’s going to produce a novel, when published, that’s about 350 pages. To me, that’s ideal. You don’t need a big thick book for a thriller.
“The Boys From Biloxi” — I’m at 120,000 right now and sweating, because I have a lot left to cover to get to the end. So, yeah, those are issues that come up. But I cannot squeeze a novel out of every idea. A perfect example is the opioid crisis. It’s right down my alley because it’s tons of litigation, corporate bad behavior, all kinds of bad guys. I’ve been itching to write that book, but I haven’t been able to get my head around a story that I could do in 100,000 words. It’s just so big. Guantánamo’s another one. I’ve been collecting research for 20 years. We’ve kept prisoners down there for 15 years without charging them with any crime. There’s a lot of lawyers who spend time down there trying to correct a terrible situation. It’s also right down my alley because it’s the legal system, but again, I can’t get my head around that story.
This is a little left-field, but I was fascinated by the fact that as a young man, you held office in the Mississippi Legislature.4 Could the 28-year-old version of you be elected in Mississippi today? At that time I was — I’m not going to say conservative. I was a moderate Democrat. Today that person doesn’t exist in the South. If I ran today, I would hope that I would run as a progressive Democrat — and I would not be elected. I have friends who hold public office in Mississippi who had to switch from Democrat to Republican to keep their jobs. If you have the D by your name, you’re not going to be elected. It has changed dramatically in the last 30 years. Also, it ought to be against the law in any state for a 28-year-old to be elected to the state legislature. I see these guys — the guy from North Carolina?
Madison Cawthorn. Yeah. Just got beat. It shows you what happens when a 26-year-old who’s off leash gets elected. He needed to be called home. You’ve got to be at least 30 years old and have some maturity before you get that job. I didn’t do any damage in my eight years, but there’s not much of a record to brag about. I didn’t do a lot of good.
What was the most morally difficult decision you had to make as a politician or a practicing lawyer?5 I’ll tell you a story. A 15-year-old girl in my church got pregnant. Her parents were devastated. Strict Southern Baptist. Small town. They were terrified people were going to find out. They came to me before they went to the minister because they were talking about adoption, the laws. Abortion terrified them. The father was 15 years old, too, so getting married was out of the question. I remember thinking, These people are leaning on me way too much. I was a 27-year-old kid, one year out of law school. They think I’m wise. I’m not ready for this. The parents weren’t a whole lot older than I was — in their early 40s, I guess. They reached a point where they trusted me, and I’m thinking, I don’t want to be in this room. I finally said: “Let’s get the minister involved. You people need help big time, and I’m not giving it to you.” My point is, I realized that on the abortion issue, that was a decision to be made by that family — that girl and the parents and nobody else. Nobody else should be in the room.
Including the government? No government, no lawmaker, no judge. That’s when I began to realize what’s at stake with abortion. I’m opposed to abortion. I didn’t want her to get an abortion, because the baby was going to be healthy — and the baby did make a great gift for someone else. She was able to leave and go live with an aunt in another town, have the baby well cared for, adopt it out. She came back, the family rallied, the church rallied. Made the best of a bad situation, and somebody got a beautiful baby. But there were times when I was thinking the quickest solution would be an abortion. I didn’t say that, but it was a quandary I was in because I was getting way too much input. That had a big impact on me as a lawyer, because you realize the influence you have. The law degree is a powerful tool. You can do a lot of good things. That’s the fun part of being a lawyer, when you help people. I was not a very good lawyer.
Why not? You’ve got to be kind of tough on the business end, and I could never say no to people who were in trouble, especially people I knew in the community. When you take everything that walks in the door, you’re going to go broke. That was my downfall. At the same time, I had strong ambitions about being a skilled courtroom lawyer. That was my goal, inspired by some great old-fashioned country trial lawyers in Mississippi I knew. I was never afraid of going to court. Most lawyers are. A lot of them are afraid to try a case in front of a jury, but I thrived on that. I dreamed of being so good that people with really good cases — injury cases or wrongful-death cases or medical-malpractice cases — would come to me and I would have the chance to make some money, which I never did.
You said that you’re opposed to abortion. For religious reasons? I’ve just never been able to stomach the idea of abortion on demand or women having multiple abortions just because they get pregnant. And I’ve always thought that late-term abortion, partial-birth abortions were something that we should not tolerate because the fetus is viable. I’ve always been turned off by that notion of abortion. I guess it’s probably religious grounds. But at the same time you don’t know what you’re going to do until you’re in that situation. That’s when it becomes a matter of choice.
What political positions did you hold when you were 28 that you don’t hold now? Death penalty, for sure.
You used to believe in it? Big time. I’m in favor of tougher gun control. I am much more suspicious of the police and prosecutors because I’ve seen so many wrongful convictions. Also, race relations: I grew up in the Jim Crow South. A very segregated, racist society was almost in my DNA. It’s a long struggle to overcome that and to look back at the way I was raised and not be resentful toward my parents and other people who helped raise me for their extreme racism. It was such a hard right-wing, racist society that I grew up in. The Baptist Church was that way too back then. I’ve come a long way. I have a lot of friends and even kinfolk who never tried to move beyond the racism. But I try every day. It’s been an ongoing, gradual transformation. My wife was another factor, because she grew up in North Carolina, and it was not as hard-core racist as Mississippi. She and her parents were much more tolerant. So she had a big influence on me. You know, we’re all tribalists. We all want to be around our people or believe in our people, and it’s often too hard to get beyond that. It’s still a struggle for me.
Has your sense of the South as a literary setting changed? To my mind, the open resurgence of racist violence makes a book like “A Time to Kill” read even more disturbingly today than it did when I first read it in the mid-90s. It’s changed in many ways. That story is based on an actual assault that happened in the 1970s in a small town not too far from where I lived and went to law school. When I wrote that story, I was 30 years old and had never written before. I can’t tell you there was a lot of careful forethought with “A Time to Kill.” I didn’t think about the portrayal of Southern Blacks and Southern whites in a small town. That was just my world. At the same period of time, in 1988, I was back from my second term at the Legislature. We had a progressive young governor, a progressive young House speaker. We thought finally Mississippi could change things. We were on the cusp of this progressive revolution. We believed it. Thirty-four years later, it’s astonishing how far backward the state has gone. The politics there are very displeasing to me.
Let me shift gears: This could be apocryphal, but I heard that you and Michael Crichton used to have some one-upmanship over money. Each of you wanted to be paid a dollar more than the other guy. Is that true? In the 1990s, for about five years in a row, my agent would take my latest manuscript — “Pelican Brief,” “The Client,” “The Chamber,” “The Rainmaker” — to Hollywood, get the studios in a room and have an auction. And when they paid, they paid millions. I don’t know what was actually said because I wasn’t there, but it was like, “Crichton got this amount; we want more.” It was back and forth. We were gaming the system big time. It was working beautifully — until it stopped. I sold the film rights to “The Runaway Jury” in 1996 to New Regency for a record amount. I can’t get a fraction of that today. You can say, Well, we choked the golden goose, but all those films made money. Then Hollywood changed. I don’t understand that world. Nobody understands that world. There’s no rules. We learned years ago, do not believe a word until they start filming. “Runaway Jury” was actually the last big contract I got. I helped write the script, which was a huge mistake. Joel Schumacher was the director. We had Sean Connery, Gwyneth Paltrow, Edward Norton ready to start filming. It was a done deal, and Joel Schumacher jumped off the bus. The whole cast walked away. It took years to make that movie.
Why was it a mistake to work on the script? I’m not a screenwriter. It’s not something I enjoy doing. One of the most frustrating parts is the teamwork. You get notes from people who don’t have a clue, who do not understand the basics of storytelling. You wonder if they even make movies. The worst note I got — it’s a great story. In 1993, ’94, somewhere in there, “The Firm,” “The Pelican Brief” and “The Client” came out in the span of about 12 months. All three books were at the top of the list, along with “A Time to Kill,” which had been rediscovered. Things were hopping. I was finishing “The Chamber,”10 and this was a stupid thing we did: A big-time Hollywood guy said, “OK, we want to buy your next book right now sight unseen.” I sent the manuscript, what I had, and this studio honcho read the first draft of an incomplete manuscript and wasn’t too crazy about it. Which really pissed me off. Suddenly this guy’s a literary critic? He sent a faxed note, I believe, to my agent at the time and said, “We can’t buy this book for a movie unless Grisham will promise three love scenes and a happy ending.” [Laughs.] If I ever write a Hollywood tell-all, that’s the title of my book: “Three Love Scenes and a Happy Ending.”
Do you think about your critical legacy as a writer? When you get started in the business and you have some success, like I did with “The Firm,” you want to be taken seriously as a writer, but you have to be honest with yourself. You can’t sell books and be loved by critics. It’s not going to happen. There are very few literary authors who sell a lot of books. The best seller for a literary novel is 25,000 copies. Fifty max. If you do sell a lot of books, you’re dismissed by critics. So I decided a long time ago, I’ll take the money and run. You talk about legacy? I don’t care. I’m going to be dead and gone.
This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations.
David Marchese is a staff writer for the magazine and the Talk columnist.
John Grisham: A Prolific Literary Force
Since releasing his first hit novel, “The Firm,” in 1991, the writer hasn’t gone a year without publishing a book.
The Pandemic: The writer spent 30 years churning out legal thrillers, but Covid’s impact on college sports prompted him to shift his focus to basketball.
John Grisham’s Do’s and Don’ts for Writing Popular Fiction
By John Grisham
Since advice is usually ignored and rules are routinely broken, I refer to these little pearls as merely “suggestions.”
There is nothing original about this list. It has all been said before by writers much smarter than me. I’ve just arranged things differently, and I keep changing them as the years go by. There’s nothing binding here. All suggestions can be ignored when necessary. I do it all the time. However, I write each day with these habits ingrained. — J.G.
1. DO — WRITE A PAGE EVERY DAY
That’s about 200 words, or 1,000 words a week. Do that for two years and you’ll have a novel that’s long enough.
Nothing will happen until you are producing at least one page per day.
2. DON’T — WRITE THE FIRST SCENE UNTIL YOU KNOW THE LAST
This necessitates the use of a dreaded device commonly called an outline. Virtually all writers hate that word. I have yet to meet one who admits to using an outline.
Plotting takes careful planning. Writers waste years pursuing stories that eventually don’t work.
3. DO — WRITE YOUR ONE PAGE EACH DAY AT THE SAME PLACE AND TIME
Early morning, lunch break, on the train, late at night — it doesn’t matter. Find the extra hour, go to the same place, shut the door.
No exceptions, no excuses.
4. DON’T — WRITE A PROLOGUE
Prologues are usually gimmicks to hook the reader. Avoid them. Plan your story (see No. 2) and start with Chapter 1.
5. DO — USE QUOTATION MARKS WITH DIALOGUE
Please do this. It’s rather basic.
6. DON’T — KEEP A THESAURUS WITHIN REACHING DISTANCE
I know, I know, there’s one at your fingertips.
There are three types of words: (1) words we know; (2) words we should know; (3) words nobody knows. Forget those in the third category and use restraint with those in the second.
A common mistake by fledgling authors is using jaw-breaking vocabulary. It’s frustrating and phony.
7. DO — READ EACH SENTENCE AT LEAST THREE TIMES IN SEARCH OF WORDS TO CUT
Most writers use too many words, and why not? We have unlimited space and few constraints.
8. DON’T — INTRODUCE 20 CHARACTERS IN THE FIRST CHAPTER
Another rookie mistake. Your readers are eager to get started. Don’t bombard them with a barrage of names from four generations of the same family. Five names are enough to get started.
“You’d think we’d have a one-sentence answer,” says Colleen Muñoz, assistant professor of health sciences at the University of Hartford. “But it’s much more complicated.”
The usual advice to drink eight 8 oz. glasses of water a day—the 8-by-8 rule—seems daunting. But it was never about water alone.
Fluid recommendations for men and women
“The National Academy of Medicine now recommends about 9½ cups a day for women and about 12 cups a day for men,” notes Sam Cheuvront, a physiologist at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine. “That includes all fluids: coffee, tea, juice, milk.” (It doesn’t include the two to three cups of liquid you’re likely to get from your food.)
In fact, that’s how much the average adult consumes (which influenced the Academy’s advice). Exception: people over 70 average only about 7 cups a day.
But the advice is just a rule of thumb. How much you need depends on how much you lose.
What may matter for your fluid needs
Heat or exercise. Heat or physical activity boosts your fluid needs. “It’s not just sweat,” says Cheuvront, who notes that his views are not official U.S. Army or Defense Department policy. “Heat or exercise also increases the water that’s lost through breathing and the water that evaporates from the skin.”
Diet. “If you eat a lot of salt or protein, your kidneys need more water to excrete the excess,” says Cheuvront. “So the more meat and high-sodium restaurant food and processed foods you eat, the more water you need.
Caffeine. “The general consensus is that moderate caffeine intake doesn’t dehydrate you,” says Muñoz.
In one study (funded by an industry-backed foundation), researchers randomly assigned 59 young men to get roughly 450, 225, or 0 milligrams of caffeine per day. (A Starbucks grande Pike Place Roast has around 300 mg.) After five days, “there was no difference in hydration markers measured over 24 hours,” says Muñoz.
Alcohol. “Alcohol turns down a hormone that tells the kidneys to retain fluid,” Muñoz explains, so it’s a diuretic. “If you drink alcohol, try to drink more water than you normally would,” she suggests.
Older age. “To say that we don’t have a good understanding of hydration needs in older people is an understatement,” says Muñoz.
Fluid needs in older adults
But some changes in older age are well documented, she notes. For example, “older people aren’t able to concentrate urine as well.” That means more trips to the bathroom.
What’s more, the sensation of thirst gets weaker in older people, so they don’t always realize when they need to drink fluids.
“And older adults are often taking a variety of medications that increase or decrease their fluid needs,” adds Muñoz.
How can you tell if you’re getting enough fluid?
Urine color isn’t a perfect measure of hydration, but it’s useful. The sweet spot, says Muñoz: “the color of lemonade.” (If your urine is colorless, you could be overhydrated.)
For a more systematic approach, you can check what Cheuvront calls the WUT criteria first thing in the morning:
Weight: Down more than 1 percent from your average morning weight.
Urine color: “Apple juice or darker.”
Thirst: “Not just a dry mouth, but so dry that it’s hard to form saliva.”
“If two of these criteria are present, it’s likely that you’re not getting enough water,” says Cheuvront. “If all three are present, you’re almost definitely dehydrated.”
Rabbi Marc Philippe comments, “The world has made massive improvements in racial, sexual and religious tolerance. Reality, however, hits hard when a situation arises and makes you realize that simple improvements are definitely not enough. Bigotry is unfortunately still a reality, bringing suffering, degradation and shattered dreams.
“The case of a Pastor denied seniority because of his sexual orientation -in 2022- indicates clearly that our society is very much intolerant. It brings us back to the Middle Ages. There is still so much pain, tears, and suffering when someone considered being the “other” is denied simple rights. There is a name for that, it is called oppression.
“When a so-called Spiritual, Religious Institution doesn’t embrace tolerance, love and inclusion it is doomed to fail.
“I wish Kipp Nelson strength. May this time of darkness be transformed into Light. I hope he will create a new space where love and understanding will be truly practiced. The entire world will benefit from that.”
Rabbi Marc Philippe rabbimarc.org kodeshhouse.org
Marc Philippe is the rabbi at Kodesh House, a grassroots Jewish organization for spirituality, healing, connection and inclusion.
He offers a new and progressive space for people to get in touch with their roots. It is a place to learn, play, grow, transform and experiment while discovering and exploring the wisdom and spirituality of Judaism.
Rabbi Marc Philippe, besides being vegetarian, is also a professional musician, hypnotist, Kabbalist and Yoga enthusiast.
On the night artist Anna Weyant’s work debuted at Christie’s, the 27-year-old painter was too nervous to attend or even watch the livestream. Instead, Ms. Weyant holed up in her small Manhattan apartment and listened to a calming app on her cellphone until a friend texted with news.
“Summertime,” Ms. Weyant’s portrait of a woman with long, flowing hair that the artist had sold for around $12,000 two years before, resold for $1.5 million, five times its high estimate.
It has been a rocket-fueled rise to the top of the contemporary art world for Ms. Weyant—and far from her unassuming start in Calgary, Canada. Spotted on Instagram three years ago and quickly vouched for by a savvy handful of artists, dealers and advisers, Ms. Weyant is now internationally coveted for her paintings of vulnerable girls and mischievous women in sharply lit, old-master hues. Imagine Botticelli as a millennial, whose porcelain-skin beauties also pop one leg high like the Victoria Beckham meme or sport gold necklaces that read, “Ride or Die.”
Ms. Weyant’s oeuvre of roughly 50 paintings has already filtered into the hands of top collectors such as investor Glenn Fuhrman and plastic surgeon Stafford Broumand. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art recently exhibited her work in a group show, and former Venice Biennale curator Francesco Bonami said he predicts she will make her own Biennale appearance soon, which would be another career milestone.
Anna Weyant sold this 2020 portrait, ‘Summertime,’ for $12,000. Two years later, the buyer resold it at Christie’s for $1.5 million. PHOTO: CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LTD. 2022
As is, demand for her art outstrips her supply: The waiting list to buy one of her paintings, dealers say, is at least 200 names long. And last month she teamed up with the biggest art gallery of them all, Gagosian.
Ms. Weyant is grateful for the attention. But she is also aware that artists seeking lifelong careers tend to thrive by building a clientele who pay them and their galleries steadily rising prices over time. If prices jump too dramatically at auction, young artists fear their initial bench of collectors won’t be willing or able to keep pace with huge price leaps. This can gut demand if wealthier collectors at auction pivot to other artists. Just as in music or the movies, no visual artist wants to wind up a one-hit wonder.
“People kept congratulating me,” she said, but the Christie’s sale didn’t put her at ease. “All I felt was pressure.”
Last month, each of New York’s three major auction houses included one of Ms. Weyant’s works in their high-profile evening sales for the first time—a sign that collectors on her gallery’s waiting list and beyond were ready to pay a premium at auction instead. All three works surpassed their auction estimates by multiples. Ms. Weyant didn’t get a share, she said, as artists in the U.S. don’t automatically get royalties on auction resales of their work.
Her record is a 2020 portrait, “Falling Woman,” that sold at Sotheby’s for $1.6 million, eight times its high estimate. The painting was consigned by Tim Blum, Ms. Weyant’s former dealer at Blum & Poe with whom she has since fallen out, according to the artist. Mr. Blum declined to comment on the consignment.
Looking ahead, Ms. Weyant’s task will be to focus on painting amid the market frenzy.
“The art world loves to devour its young,” said art critic Jerry Saltz, an early admirer of Ms. Weyant. “It can be difficult to paint with another voice in your head whispering numbers and prices, but maybe she can.”
‘I’m just trying to protect her from the big bad wolves’
As she ascends the art world, Ms. Weyant has powerful help. But it’s complicated.
Dealer Larry Gagosian and Anna Weyant were spotted in July 2021 at a dinner at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris. PHOTO: BERTRAND RINDOFF PETROFF/GETTY IMAGES FOR LOUIS VUITTON
For the past year, the artist has been dating Larry Gagosian, the 77-year-old founder of arguably the most powerful art gallery network in the world. Precedence exists for such art-world romances: New York dealer Gavin Brown is married to artist Hope Atherton, though he said he never represented her. But Ms. Weyant and Mr. Gagosian’s May-December relationship is being scrutinized in art circles.
Martin Smick, Ms. Weyant’s painting professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, said he recently defended her against some artists who “were being snarky and jaded” about the preferential treatment she might get by joining her boyfriend’s gallery. “I feel protective of her,” Mr. Smick said.
Ellie Rines, owner of the New York gallery 56 Henry, which gave Ms. Weyant her first New York solo show three years ago, said anyone who factors the artist’s dating life into her odds of success is being misogynistic.
For his part, Mr. Gagosian said he has never dated an artist of any kind before. The pair even wavered on whether she should join the gallery because of the optics, they both said. He said he feels his gallery can help get more of her pieces into museums than auction catalogs, though, and when it comes to discussions about her career, he said, he treats her the same as his other artists.
“She’s intelligent and has this Midwestern reserve, and she doesn’t speak all the art lingo,” he said. “I’m just trying to protect her from the big bad wolves.”
Ms. Weyant said she welcomes his gallery’s market expertise, calling it a comfort.
The artist is also trying to stick to her familiar routine.
Although she increasingly travels in Mr. Gagosian’s jet-set circuit, she still lives and works in the one-bedroom apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side that she moved into in 2017. She pulls the curtains shut in her living-room-turned-studio when she works, her King Charles spaniel snoring beside her. The environment is hermetic, though her disposition is bubbly. When visitors come, the artist said she likes to bake chocolate-chip cookies.
Anna Weyant pulls the curtains shut when she paints in her Manhattan home-turned-studio, surrounded by brushes and books. PHOTO: TESS AYANO FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Growing up, Ms. Weyant didn’t know anyone who chose a life in art. The daughter of a lawyer and a provincial court judge, she said the only paintings in her childhood home were her grandfather’s flea-market finds.
She signed up to attend college at RISD mainly because it was the closest school to New York that accepted her. She didn’t immediately declare a major, but by her first winter there she had gravitated to its painting classes. Emulating British painter Lucian Freud’s impasto style, she entered an art contest held by the National Gallery of Canada the summer after her freshman year—and placed in the top three.
Her sophomore year, she started painting women and girls who looked lost in forested fairy tales.
“Being new, confused and homesick in a new country, I was just scared,” she said. “I remember thinking that if I could transfer my fears to the woman I was painting, at least I had another person in the conversation with me.”
Anna Weyant says she’s trying to stick to her familiar routine, painting in her small Manhattan apartment. PHOTO: TESS AYANO FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
After graduating in 2017, she spent seven months painting at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, and she credits the city’s sepia-tone terrain with influencing her signature muted palette. Her thick brushstrokes started to smooth.
Ms. Weyant’s big break came when she moved back to New York in the spring of 2018 and began assisting Cynthia Talmadge, a pointillist painter. Ms. Talmadge promoted her assistant by posting some of Ms. Weyant’s work on her own Instagram, including a young woman lounging in a bathrobe with one leg popped skyward, “Reposing V.”
Ms. Talmadge also introduced her assistant to her dealer at 56 Henry, Ms. Rines. “I saw a lot of potential in her,” Ms. Rines said.
Group shows started to follow. That next summer of 2019, Ms. Rines laid out Ms. Weyant’s drawings on a beach towel at a Hamptons art fair and sold some for around $400 apiece.
That same summer, the young artist received an unsolicited—and critical—voucher from the art establishment: Mr. Saltz, the critic, posted nine examples of her work on his Instagram that he said he had found by googling her, attracting 4,352 likes. He doesn’t own any work by her; he said later he merely found her work gripping.
By September 2019, buzz was mounting for Ms. Weyant’s first New York solo show, “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” at 56 Henry. Her paintings of somber young girls summed up the agonies of early adolescence, including one who had stuffed tissues into her gaping bra. Every piece in the show sold out for between $2,000 to $12,000 apiece.
After that, collectors had to get creative to get access to her work. Canadian collector Lorin Gu commissioned Ms. Weyant to paint a work he unveiled at his family’s Recharge Foundation in Singapore. The piece, “Dinner,” shows a girl whose face has planted onto her plate, her blonde hair spilling luxuriously over the table. In Los Angeles, designer Justine Freeman and her lawyer husband Ben Khakshour enlisted art adviser Adam Green to secure Ms. Weyant’s self-portrait, “Aw,” from a group show at Anna Zorina Gallery.
Private dealer Joe Sheftel managed to help his client buy another work, “Summertime,” after first giving it pride of place in a group show he organized in Provincetown, Mass. Mr. Sheftel confirmed he helped the same client resell it two years later at Christie’s.
Around this time, Bill Powers of Half Gallery also introduced the artist’s work to Mr. Gagosian, at one point holding up his cellphone to scroll past images of a dozen artists’ works. Mr. Gagosian later said Ms. Weyant’s work in that batch stood out as “refined and imaginative,” adding, “I loved the clarity and moodiness of it.”
Mr. Gagosian went to 56 Henry and bought Ms. Weyant’s “Head,” an up-close painting of a woman whose blonde hair is cascading down her naked shoulders. It’s hanging in his house now, he said.
‘I feel like I have my footing now’
By the spring of 2021, Ms. Weyant was on the ascent. Prices for her paintings were approaching $50,000. Los Angeles gallery Blum & Poe, by then exclusively representing her, let people visit her first solo show with the gallery in March by appointment—including Mr. Gagosian, who invited the artist to dinner at his house in Beverly Hills.
“She wanted to know if I had any gin,” he said. “That’s one of my favorite things to drink.”
Soon enough, tabloids started spotting the couple in Paris and Saint-Tropez. Her works, meanwhile, were increasingly impossible to find on the primary market. When Ms. Rines tried to help one of her biggest collectors buy a work from the Blum & Poe show, she said, dealer Jeff Poe told her that the artist had a long waiting list. “I know,” she said she told him. “I built the waiting list.”
Mr. Poe, reached through the gallery, declined to comment on Ms. Rines or Ms. Weyant.
‘Chest’ from 2020 is headed to the auction block at Phillips Hong Kong on June 22 with a low estimate of $64,100.PHOTO: COURTESY OF PHILLIPS
Ms. Weyant remains friendly with Ms. Rines and others who showed her early work. But she declined to discuss the wind-down of her relationship with Blum & Poe because she was unhappy with how things ended. The artist entered into a confidential settlement agreement with the gallery earlier this year.
According to a friend who said Ms. Weyant confided in her before she shifted galleries, Ms. Weyant felt unsettled after she allowed gallery staff members to buy three paintings and a drawing from her Los Angeles show. Ms. Weyant’s friend said that the artist later told her the dealers held onto these works even as they told significant collectors that her show was sold out.
Blum & Poe co-founder Tim Blum declined to comment.
The artist said she sold Mr. Blum her “Falling Woman” for $15,000—half the going rate collectors were charged by his gallery for other works in her spring 2021 show. A year later, he consigned it to Sotheby’s where it sold for $1.6 million. Traditionally, dealers don’t auction off their own artists’ work, preferring to resell works to their collectors at price levels they can closely manage. It’s unclear in this case whether Mr. Blum still represented Ms. Weyant when he consigned the painting. He declined to discuss the painting.
For her part, Ms. Weyant said Mr. Blum’s alleged consignment proved to be the last straw. Once she found out that three of her works were headed to auction, Ms. Weyant announced that she had officially moved to Gagosian Gallery.
Now, she’s trying to focus on her upcoming solo show at her new gallery this November. Already, the women she paints appear to be changing, taking up bigger canvases and sporting ruby lips and ponytails, “like evil cheerleaders,” she said. She might be channeling the vixens and victims of the Lifetime channel movies that she said she’s been watching lately for research.
“My fear, maybe it’s transitioning into something more theatrical,” she said. “I feel like I have my footing now.”
DigiDame 