Wednesday, June 17, 2026

Ed Slavin: Preserve and Protect Sinclair Lewis Cottage, 177 Surfside

On Monday, June 15, 2026 at 08:20:33 PM EDT, Ed Slavin <easlavin@aol.com> wrote:



To: 
St. Johns County Commission Chair Clay Murphy, Vice Chair Ann Taylor & Commissioners Sarah Arnold, Christian Whitehurst and Krista Joseph; 
Sheriff Hardwick, 
Constitutional Officers and Staff:

1. St. Johns County Commissioners: re: item 7 on June 16, 2026, Please vote to postpone any action on 177 Surfside for one (1) year.

2. St. Johns County residents love and cherish our unique history.  

3. Please work together to preserve and to protect Sinclair Lewis  Cottage, the former seasonal home of  Nobel Prize winning author Sinclair Lewis.  

4. Please include a modest budget line item for research.

5. We're proud that our St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners preserved and protected the 1953 Jail Annex, where some 1000+ people were incarcerated after civil rights protests, including sixteen (16) Rabbis and Nobel Prize winning Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who graciously called this "the nicest jail" he'd ever visited.

6. We're also proud that SJC BoCC preserved another literary lion's landmark, the home of Wm. Stetson Kennedy.  

7. Likewise, let's preserve Sinclair Lewis Cottage as another literary landmark. 

Yes we can!

More on Nobel Prize winning Sinclair Lewis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Lewis

Thank you.
With kindest regards, I am,
Sincerely yours,
Ed Slavin
Box 3084
St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084
www.edslavin.com
(904) 377-4998 





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Mosquito Control and Overdevelopment



I am running for Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County in the November 3, 2026 election.  May I please have your vote?

Flooding is increasing.  Increased flooding flows from every single proposed "development" here. Mosquitoes flourish amid flooding. 

The frequency and severity of storms and flooding is increasing.  We must use good science to prepare for the storms and remediate the flooding.  

We must protect people from persistent flooding, evidenced by testimony at government meetings.  

Whenever a development (sic) proposal is discussed, residents testify about flooding.  Too often, our governments are flummoxed, failing to present scientific evidence in response. 

Our Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County does its best to apply good science to mosquito control.  It has five Ph.D. scientists.

But our St. Johns County Commission has no Chief Scientist, no Chief Economist, and makes decisions substantially unencumbered by good data and good science.  

Poorly-staffed County Commissioners rather remind me of what Sir Winston Spencer Churchill said in 1937, "The Government simply cannot make up their mind, or they cannot get the Prime Minister to make up his mind. So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent. So we go on preparing more months and years – precious, perhaps vital to the greatness of Britain – for the locusts to eat."

Mosquitoes are eating us alive.  Building "developments" in mosquito swamps is unwise and unscientific.  It needs to stop. 

Our St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners and our Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County are two separate local government agencies, with their own boards.  

SJC abolished its Intergovernmental Relations Committee under  controversial former County Administrator MICHAEL DAVID WANCHICK (2007-2019), who sought a County takeover of mosquito control.  We, the People stopped him. 

Our County must better regulate "development" by greedy "developers," who build homes in swamps, exposing residents to hordes of mosquitoes. 

Worldwide, some 1,000,000 people die every year after mosquito bites. My Father was bitten by a mosquito in Sicily in 1943, contracting malaria.  We saw his suffering.  Due to the effects of malaria, I was born fourteen (14) years later, after my parents prayed to Saint Jude (patron Saint of hopeless causes).. 

Our County's "Growth Management (sic)" staff must consult with experts with our Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County and AMCD's scientists and professionals.  

Every single "development (sic) order" must include a mosquito control plan. Every single one. No excuses. Protection against mosquito-borne diseases must not be a "hopeless cause."

I am running for Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County (Seat 2) in the November 3, 2026 election.  

May I please have the honor of your vote?


Thank you.
With kindest regards, I am,
Sincerely yours,
Ed Slavin
Box 3084
St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084
www.edslavin.com
(904) 377-4998
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Tuesday, June 16, 2026

This exercise ‘sweet spot’ is linked to greater longevity. (Gretchen Reynolds column, The Washington Post, June 16, 2026)

From The Washington Post:

Fitness

This exercise ‘sweet spot’ is linked to greater longevity

A new study pinpoints how many minutes per week of strength training might help people avoid death from conditions including heart attacks and Alzheimer’s.

6 min
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What’s the ideal amount of weight training if you’d like to live long and well?

In a new study published this month in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, scientists set out to find the “sweet spot” for resistance exercise and longevity.

Gathering 30 years’ worth of data about exercise habits from more than 147,000 men and women, they looked for associations between the number of minutes people spent lifting weights each week and how long they lived. 

According to the results, any amount of resistance exercise, even a few minutes a week, was associated with a lower risk of premature death than never lifting at all, including among people who regularly walked, ran or did other aerobic exercise. 

The links were especially strong for cardiovascular disease and neurological conditions. The data showed that people who lifted weights, no matter how infrequently, were less likely to die from heart attacks or Alzheimer’s diseasecompared with people who did no resistance training. 

But the scientists also zeroed in on the “Goldilocks” level of weekly lifting — the number of minutes per week that isn’t too little or too much, but just right — associated with the greatest longevity benefit overall, whether people also exercised aerobically or not. 

They seem to have found it. 

Links between longevity and lifting haven’t been studied much

For decades, researchers have been studying the precise amounts of aerobic exercise we’re likely to need to live long, healthy lives. The scientific consensus, quantified in the current physical activity recommendations from the Department of Health and Human Services, is at least 150 minutes per week of moderate exercise, such as speedy walking.

Smaller amounts of aerobic activity, even a few minutes a day, likewise have been associated in recent studies with greater longevity and health, especially if the effort involved is challenging. 

“But less is known about how resistance exercise relates to long-term mortality risks,” said Edward Giovannucci, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and senior author of the new study, “especially at different amounts and combinations with aerobic activity.”

HHS recommendations suggest two days a week of some kind of muscle-strengthening exercise but provide no other details. 

Studying the exercise habits of almost 150,000 people 

So Giovannucci and his colleagues decided to mine the available data, hunting for the potentially most effective “dose” of strengthening exercise for longevity. 

Conveniently, Harvard oversees a number of large studies and databases that have gathered health information from nurses and other health care workers for the past 30 years. 

Participants in these studies have repeatedly filled out detailed questionnaires about their exercise habits over the years, including how many minutes each week they ran, walked, cycled, swam or otherwise worked out aerobically, as well as how often they lifted weights (focusing, in particular, on using weight machines and free weights). 

The researchers pulled data for 147,374 of these men and women, most of them middle-aged when they joined the studies, and cross-checked them with death records for the following 30 years or so. 

Then, using complex models of how different types and amounts of activity related to lifespans, they analyzed the intersections of exercise and mortality.

Finding the sweet spot for lifting 

The sweet spot for weekly resistance training — the amount associated with the maximum longevity benefit per minute — was easy to detect.

It came at anywhere between 90 and 119 minutes per week of lifting.

Lifting for that much time each week was linked to a 13 percent lower risk of dying prematurely from any cause and a 19 percent lower risk of dying from heart disease. 

Somewhat surprisingly, the risks of dying from neurological diseases, such as dementia, were improved the most, declining by 27 percent. 

Smaller amounts of resistance exercise, including even a few minutes a week, likewise were linked to longer lives, though the declines in mortality risk were slighter. 

After 119 weekly minutes, any gains flattened; lifting more didn’t raise mortality risks but didn’t further improve them, either.

Doing both aerobic and resistance exercise was best 

Perhaps most important, the gains in lifespan associated with lifting came on top of any that people might be getting from aerobic exercise, since the researchers controlled for that kind of exercise. In effect, the gains were additive, and doing both was best. “People who combined aerobic exercise with resistance training generally had the lowest mortality risk,” said Yiwen Zhang, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who led the study. 

“Given its large sample size and long-term follow-up period, with repeated measures of resistance-training behaviors, the findings are convincing,” said David Scott, an exercise scientist at Deakin University in Australia who studies exercise and health but wasn’t involved in this research. 

The study doesn’t show, though, how best to use the 90 to 119 minutes of lifting each week. Would three 30-minute workouts or 15 minutes a day be better for longevity than one 90-minute session? Is it better to lift heavier weights than light ones? Could push-ups and other calisthenics be just as effective as machine-based moves? “Future research is certainly needed” to answer those questions, Giovannucci said. 

The study also doesn’t explain how weight training reduces the risk of dying prematurely. But other research suggests that being strong improves mobility and helps prevent falls with age. Muscle mass is beneficial, too, for lifelong metabolic health, and resistance exercise probably improves brain health by releasing substancesinto the bloodstream that travel to the brain and jump-start processes there that help keep it youthful. 

But even with the study’s many outstanding questions, its findings keep its authors lifting.

“I’ve been doing so for the past 25 years,” Giovannucci said, “typically two to three times a week, about 45 minutes each time,” landing squarely in the study’s sweet spot. 

Zhang is still working her way there, she said, lifting lightly about twice a week, for about an hour in total. But, given the results of her research, “I’m aiming to build up.”

Do you have a fitness question? Email YourMove@washpost.com, and we may answer your question in a future column.

What readers are saying

The comments on the article primarily criticize its structure, noting that it takes too long to reveal the key information about the recommended 90-119 minutes of weekly strength training for health benefits. Many readers express frustration with the article's style, comparing it... Show more
This summary is AI-generated. AI can make mistakes and this summary is not a replacement for reading the comments.
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Doing both aerobic and resistance exercise was best 

Perhaps most important, the gains in lifespan associated with lifting came on top of any that people might be getting from aerobic exercise, since the researchers controlled for that kind of exercise. In effect, the gains were additive, and doing both was best. “People who combined aerobic exercise with resistance training generally had the lowest mortality risk,” said Yiwen Zhang, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who led the study. 

“Given its large sample size and long-term follow-up period, with repeated measures of resistance-training behaviors, the findings are convincing,” said David Scott, an exercise scientist at Deakin University in Australia who studies exercise and health but wasn’t involved in this research. 

The study doesn’t show, though, how best to use the 90 to 119 minutes of lifting each week. Would three 30-minute workouts or 15 minutes a day be better for longevity than one 90-minute session? Is it better to lift heavier weights than light ones? Could push-ups and other calisthenics be just as effective as machine-based moves? “Future research is certainly needed” to answer those questions, Giovannucci said. 

The study also doesn’t explain how weight training reduces the risk of dying prematurely. But other research suggests that being strong improves mobility and helps prevent falls with age. Muscle mass is beneficial, too, for lifelong metabolic health, and resistance exercise probably improves brain health by releasing substancesinto the bloodstream that travel to the brain and jump-start processes there that help keep it youthful. 

But even with the study’s many outstanding questions, its findings keep its authors lifting.

“I’ve been doing so for the past 25 years,” Giovannucci said, “typically two to three times a week, about 45 minutes each time,” landing squarely in the study’s sweet spot. 

Zhang is still working her way there, she said, lifting lightly about twice a week, for about an hour in total. But, given the results of her research, “I’m aiming to build up.”

Do you have a fitness question? Email YourMove@washpost.com, and we may answer your question in a future column.

What readers are saying

The comments on the article primarily criticize its structure, noting that it takes too long to reveal the key information about the recommended 90-119 minutes of weekly strength training for health benefits. Many readers express frustration with the article's style, comparing it... Show more
This summary is AI-generated. AI can make mistakes and this summary is not a replacement for reading the comments.
NEWSLETTERDAILY
Today’s Headlines
The most important news stories of the day, curated by Post editors, delivered every morning.






 




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