Not only are they completely boring, but they also apparently aren't good for your back either. All that flexing puts unnecessary strain on the back. People usually do crunches to tone their abs and get closer to the six-pack stomach, but ironically lots of crunches don't accomplish that. Nutrition and total body exercise (i.e. dropping your body fat percentage) play a bigger role in the ab aesthetic than tons of crunches. Plus, overdoing crunches just overdevelops the rectus abdominus relative to the other ab muscles. The result of a rectus abdominus being a lot stronger than the transverse and obliques would be? Right. Poochy belly.

“You need a spring tonic,” decreed a friend in Rome, as I entered her apartment feeling light-headed and without appetite. She charged immediately to the kitchen where, with a flourish, she peeled a whole lemon in one long swoop, and tossed the peel into a small saucepan with about a cup and a half of water.

Lecturing nonstop, my friend instructed me, for future reference, to boil the tonic until the water was reduced to one cup, about ten minutes, then drink it hot.

In nature, progress often occurs in small degrees. At thirty-two degrees the earth is frozen and still, but move just one degree higher to thirty-three and the earth starts to warm and thaw. Then plants, whose energies have rested for the winter, begin an ascent that gradually forms new buds. People, too, who have rested their deep roots throughout the winter, now prepare to rise and bloom.