Insomnia help albany ny7/4/2023 ![]() ![]() The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.Ī blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Still, there are some strong stories here, such as one in which the author tells of how reaching his lowest point led him to a place of greater resilience.Īn earnest but disjointed personal guide to overcoming chronic insomnia.Ī former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.ĭiscovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. This sleep guide also contains a great deal of summary and repetition that detract from the book as a whole. ![]() However, more specifics about these strategies would have greatly added to the book’s value. These arguments, built more upon personal experience than evidence-based strategies, will offer many readers some insight on ways that one may be able to facilitate slumber without medical intervention or expensive technology. Many tips emphasize an approach to sleep that’s related to cognitive behavioral therapy specifically, they draw strongly upon the idea that a person can change their perspective about insomnia and replace intrusive thoughts that induce wakefulness. He also discusses myriad strategies that didn’t work for him as well as other established approaches that proved successful. He calls these the “Six Ps to Better Sleep”-“Preparation,” “Plan,” “Possibility,” “Positivity,” “Passion,” and “Pay Off”-and explains each in detail. ![]() Desperate for a solution, Altschuler tried multiple options-from medication to therapy to neurofeedback-until he encountered Springfield, Oregon–based sleep physician Daniel Erichsen, who provides this book’s foreword and whose coaching became the basis for Altschuler’s own sleep hygiene tips and best practices for a sound slumber. After his return to work following cancer treatments, he found that constant sleep deprivation resulted in anxiety, social isolation, and, eventually, suicidal ideation and despair. In 2017, California-based mental health counselor Altschuler was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. This memoir and self-help book presents one man’s experience with anxiety-related sleep deprivation and how he overcame it. ![]()
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