What’s New?

We like innovation best when it veers into the unexpected, even the odd

Welcome back to Bay Weekly in 2010.

New ideas belong in the first issue of a new year — and in 2010, we have a new decade as well. So in planning Bay Weekly’s Vol. xviii, No. 1 issue, I asked writers for stories that delved into subjects innovative, unexpected and odd.

The Unexpected: How to keep from losing your mind.

It wasn’t only the rush of the holidays. Twenty-first century time is fast time, and it’s speeding by us at such a pace that keeping up is a losing game. If you’ve ever felt what you’re losing is your mind — as Bay Weekly humorists Diana Beechener and Dick Wilson certainly have — we’ve got three stories for you.

First, Beechener and Wilson, who are separated in age by five decades, compare notes on the forces driving them out of their minds. I wouldn’t be surprised, once you’ve read their stories, if you didn’t have to sit down and write your own. Jump right in, and we’ll make Losing Your Mind a regular novelty in Bay Weekly’s pages.

If you’d rather not lose your mind, we’ve still got the story for you. Beechener and Wilson’s antics are simply lead-up to this week’s feature, How to Keep from Losing Your Mind. Therein, health writer Sondra Kornblatt explains that when it comes to the brain, it’s use it or lose it. In her story, you’ll find five creative — the other standard I set for writers — ways to exercise your brain.

The Innovative: How to heat up your exercise routine.

Turn up the temperature, advises Bay Weekly’s newest contributing writer, Katie Dodd, who documents her sweaty misery as a nearly naked new student of Bikram yoga. Why does she endure an hour and a half of vigorous stretching in a room with the heat set to 105 degrees? And return several times a week? Bikram yogis burn from 800 to 1,200 calories per session.

The Odd: How to green your life from the bottom up.

Forty thousand Frenchmen and women weren’t wrong, Earth Talk advises. If Americans switch from toilet paper to the hygiene solution of les Français, we can save 15 million trees a year.

Yes, we’re talking about the bidet.

Not that the French have the whole solution, for they use toilet paper and bidets. “The bidet is not a replacement for TP, but rather an enhancement,” says contributing writer Jane Elkin, who teaches French at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Are paperless potties even possible, let alone desirable? To find out, turn to Earth Talk on page 8.

Is that innovative enough for the advanced year 2010?

The Editor Is In

Make 2010 the year you encounter your inner storyteller. The editor is in to meet aspiring Bay Weekly writers from 4 to 6pm on three January Thursdays: January 7, 14 and 21. Call early for your 15-minute appointment: 410-626-9888. Or, if you don’t mind a wait, drop in.

from the Editor

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