Category Archives: Health

Aging, Asia, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Health

That Old Achievement Bugaboo

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Beltane                                                                Waxing Last Frost Moon

Deciding to take a gamble on the weather, with the aid of the forecasters, Kate planted some frost sensitive plants today:  coleus, especially.  She also planted artemisia, Jacob’s Ladder, alyssum and purple wave petunias.  Mark weeded.  Meanwhile I was in St. Paul doing my next to last session with Leslie.

Tonight was Tai Chi.  When I arrived, there was no one else there except the first teacher I encountered and an advanced student.  Nobody else showed up, presumably due to mother’s day.  That meant I had a personal class with two teachers.  It was a revelation.  This teacher, the one I met the first night of class, has a style that connects with me.

She spoke about learning Chinese, listening to the words at night before she went to bed and in the morning before class and recommended, again, since she had done the same thing at the one class she taught, that I practice morning and night.  Just immerse yourself, she said.  We come to these things with such an achievement orientation and we have to jettison it, let go of mistakes, think of them as occurrences, concentrate on the process.

Tai Chi has 13 different moves, a vocabulary of movement, a style of movement rooted in another culture.  I’ve learned 5 of them so far.  Well, sort of learned them.

It was a good class. What I needed at this point.

Aging, Art and Culture, Asia, Bees, Health

Uh-Oh

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Beltane                                                           Sliver Bee Hiving Moon

Bees check this morning.  Colony 1 is queenright.  Colonies 2 and 3 were not queenright because I had improperly handled the indirect release.  The queens were in the cage still, being tended to by the colony so I direct released both of them.  At the next hive inspection, I imagine they will be queenright, too.  Pollen patties were not depleted, nor even used for that matter.  There was still honey in the frames from last year’s hives, so all looks good right now.   The bees were calm.

Had a last hurrah with the Titian show, docent colleagues who’d toured it showed up.  We discussed how we’d handled certain paintings, noticed things we hadn’t seen before, fun to rehash.  Afterward we went over to Rinata’s and had their $20 Sunday evening meal.  Tasty.

After that, tai chi, just down Hennepin five blocks.  Was I not ready for what happened tonight.  I positioned myself on the end of the line and, being alone, totally lost my place, forgot moves I knew well.  I’d practiced and practiced this week.

Dropping the moves out of my consciousness created a sense of panic, one I know well.  My brain tells me:  leave, leave, leave.  It’s a sort of red klaxon at work.  A tight chest.  I don’t like to fail.  At anything.  And this is for stress relief?  Well, not for me.  Not tonight.  I calmed myself down, changed positions and tried to keep my head in the class.  It was hard.

Afterward I talked with teacher.  She reassured me.  Told me chaos often proceeds a break through.  Told me that she was totally confused in her first ten weeks.  That she’d get me confident.  I felt flushed and embarrassed when she told me I had to concentrate on keeping my hips together.  I though I had been.  Again, I don’t like to be doing something poorly.  There is of course motivation here, yes, but there’s also fear and avoidance.

On the drive back I just drove, listening to Wolf Hall, a very good novel about Henry the VIII, Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell.

Aging, Art and Culture, Health, Retirement

Adding One More

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Spring                                                       Waxing Bee Hiving Moon

Played space invaders again this morning.  My ophthalmologist insists on calling it a visual field.  It tests peripheral vision, a clue to advancing glaucoma.  I have already been treated with laser holes for narrow angle glaucoma, but now, in a not surprising development, my pressures have inched up past high normal, so I’m adding another drug to my list.  These bodies definitely have a sell-by date and mine is beginning to turn brown like the lettuce in an old batch.

In addition, to add insult to the diagnosis, my ophthalmologist, whom I’ve seen for twenty years or so, has decided to retire.  This is my last visit with her.  So, not only does the body begin to retire from its functions, so do the folks who take care of it.  My dentist retired two years ago; my internist left three years ago.  Pretty soon I’ll be the only one left.

Sculpture.  Here’s a peculiar lacunae.  I bought the Grove Dictionary of Art on sale.  It’s 30+ thick volumes of wonderful information.  But.  It has no sculpture section.  Strange.  Lots of stuff on individual sculptors, traditions, sculptures, but no general article.

Just finished the legcom call, now into Oceanaire for a birthday dinner with Mark.

Aging, Asia, Dogs, Health

Feeling the Burn

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Spring                                                        New Bee Hiving Moon

As the day draws to a close, many of the matters seem to have come to some resolution.  My brother will be coming here to live with us for awhile.  We’ll see what he needs when he gets here.

I’ve figured out a way to calm the doggy waters with crating two dogs, letting the others in or out, then crating the others.  Sort of a shell game, but it does the trick and has prevented any more teeth baring episodes.  We’ll see how it works tomorrow.

After the episode where I got bit, my adrenalin was so high I had to sit for a while to calm my body back down.  I haven’t been that far into fight or flight for a long time.

Tai Chi has begun to burn.  My thighs.  The lesson tonight, Guard Left, involves co-ordinating several parts of the body and some of my body parts resisted the lesson.  I’ll get it eventually.  I’ve needed, for some time, a physical discipline, one beyond the resistance and aerobic work I do just to stay healthy.  Tai Chi will teach me, I can see now, better balance, flexibility, body awareness and grace.

The old Burch pharmacy at Hennepin and Franklin in Minneapolis is empty now with Art Smart art work by kids and adults hanging in the windows that used to advertise drugs and cosmetics.  Over the pharmacy is a warren of rooms, offices for the Nancy Hauser Dance Studio, another for another dance company, an odd shaped room with various couches and chairs, some comfy, some designy, a threadbare carpet, windows with no blinds and a small digital sign overlooking Hennepin.

There is a dance floor, made of a composite material screwed to the floor in 4 X 8 panels.  It has a pinkish pastel pearl cast and serves the two dance groups, a Karate club and the The Great River Tai Chi school.  Tonight as we practiced a dance rehearsal was underway across the hall, so music with a big beat kept intervening with my Taoist serenity.

This is the city at its finest.  A decrepit building put to good use, providing creative space and space for strangers to meet and try out new activities.  I’m reading a book about cities now and it wants, so far, to celebrate cities for just this, people jostling up against one another, offering their passions to others, ideas sparking and new institutions being born as old ones die.

When I walked out past the Lowry Hill Liquor store and saw the lights of downtown and felt the Walker just blocks away, I agreed.

Aging, Health, Politics, Retirement

Boomers Crashing on the Beach

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Spring                                                        Waning Bloodroot Moon

“The only source of knowledge is experience.” -Albert Einstein

I’m not sure I completely agree with Einstein, since I would give abstract thought the potential for creating knowledge, too; but, it is true that without experience the thinker has none of the material necessary for understanding.  This leads to an interesting observation about life at any point.  As we remove ourselves from experience, whether by depression, illness or again, our capacity to develop new knowledge grows weaker.  We can fall prey to narrow perspectives, prejudices, knowledge built on weak foundations.

The silver tsunami, baby boomers crashing on the beach of old age with considerable force, runs the risk of making our politics out of balance.  That is, if the aging who have been active in the world pull back and reduce themselves to voting what seems to be in their self interest, those of us in that number might find ourselves on the sharp end of political reprisal.  Read Susan Jacoby’s fine book, Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age.  She outlines the case for intergenerational struggle if we don’t extend health care coverage to all citizens through a program similar in scope and kind to medicare.  With a smaller number of workers supporting an increasing number of seniors, remember tsunami waves keep coming, in this case for 25 years +, national health insurance will be critical to assuring the successful retirement of all those workers we need.  Absent a way to see their ways through to their own retirement these younger workers may rebel against the burden of carrying us on their backs.

Jacoby’s book has several other pertinent perspectives, among them reminding us to prepare for old old age, now sometime after 80, when 50% of those in that age bracket have Alzheimers.  50%!  And the rest of us will likely have some other debilitating condition or another.  A good read.  An important one.

Aging, Great Work, Health, Politics, Weather +Climate, World History

Clean Teeth. Legislation. Western Civ.

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Spring                                                                       Waning Bloodroot Moon

Dangerous driving conditions tomorrow. Winter storm warning.  Who stole my spring?

Into the city twice today, once to get my teeth cleaned and a second time for a Sierra Club meeting on legislative basics.  The teeth cleaning, an every 6 months visit, has become routine by now.  Mary, the dental hygienist I saw today, complimented on my teeth-brushing.  That feels a bit to me like being told, good boy, you cleaned your plate.  Mary has a gentle way with her and worked hard to convince me to take extra good care of my teeth.  It’s important for overall health, especially as we age.

On both trips listened to another lecture series, this one on Western Civilization, part II.  It focuses on the 500+ years in which modernism arose.  This is ground I’ve been over from several perspectives over the years, but each time it gets a bit clearer and the puzzle pieces seem to fit together better.  Modernism and the Enlightenment are key to understanding our current political, cultural, social and economic conditions, so it’s hard to become over educated about them.  What I enjoy now is finding connections between, say, Chinese history and Western.

I’m on lecture 9 already.  Just finished the Reformation, ground I know pretty well, but it never hurts to hear it put in the larger socio-political context.

The economic and environmental situation we find ourselves in now can be traced back to this period, both the good and the bad.  More later.  I’m tired.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Health, Humanities, Retirement

This is life.

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Imbolc                                            Waning Bridgit Moon

Sunday night Kate and I went to St. Anthony Main, overlooking the Mississippi and St. Anthony Falls, for a Roots Music festival put on by KBEM, a local jazz station.  While we ate at the Aster Cafe and listened to a small group, Kate looked up at me and said, “Ah, the life of the retiree.”

I understood what she meant.  Free at last.  But….

I had another reaction too, “Yes, I know what you mean.  But, really.  This is life.  Not retired life, but life itself.”

In that moment I realized the category mistake everyone makes when speaking of retirement.  It is seen as special, different, unique, something to be fussed over and transitioned into when really it’s just life, life continuing.  Not different, not special, not unique, not to be fussed over.

Or, to say the same thing another way.  It is different, special, unique, to be fussed over because it is your life, your life, your one and only special and true life.  We have to want our life and lead our life before we work, while we work and after we work.  We do vacate the workplace, but we do not retire from our lives.

In fact, the fuss is too often that we’ve left our lives up to others.  Our boss, our clients, our patients, our corporation or agency.  The past times and activities that seem so necessary, but are really only the ideas of others.

So, the problem and the promise lies not within the change in our work, but with the change in ourselves.  If we have known what our life is, if  we have chosen activities and friends for their intrinsic value not their external rewards, well, then, on with your life.  If not, the issue is not the transition, but the need for self-examination, for honesty with the you that you bring to life as  you grow older.  No one else can do this work for you.  It’s up to you.

Cooking, Health, Weather +Climate

Nix Still Comes Down…Geesh

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Imbolc                                                       Waning Bridgit Moon

This has been a nix two-day event.  The Woolly’s, for the first time I recall, canceled.  Too little parking around Charlie Haislet’s condo.

The days events scattered around me, I never quite got traction, feel a little down.  Nothing bad, just wheels spinning.  Don’t like it.

The snow-blower, which needs a tune-up, chugged, coughed and sputtered, but worked long enough to blow the snow off the sidewalk.  I was glad.  This was too heavy for a shoveling session.

Kate and I do plan to join the Y here after I get back from Blue Cloud.  I’m after a personal trainer to get a resistance work out going again, plus I’m going to do my first Pilates and attend a bodyflow class that uses a combination of Tai-Chi, yoga and Pilates.  Sounds fun to me.  I’m deconditioned right now when it comes to muscle mass, so shoveling the walk would have hurt.  My aerobic conditioning is fine, no heart attack likely, but a lot of back and shoulder ache.  Looking forward to getting back to resistance work.

So, I’m gonna workout then roast a chicken with garlic cloves under its skin and onions on the inside.  These are our garlic and onions, still useful this far into the season.  I’m also going to use some canned beans from 2007.  A little bulgur and we’ll have a meal.

Aging, Cooking, Health

On Weight

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Imbolc                                                                       New (Bridgit) Moon

While at the Northern Clay Center yesterday, I had a conversation about weight loss.  Weight loss can prove difficult for those of us in recovery since we often replace alcohol with calories.  The obsessive nature of the alcoholic personality tends to keep us coming back for more, of no matter what.  If we can’t have beer, we can at least have the weinerschnitzel.  Many Americans, not only those in recovery, struggle with weight gain.

My own weight gain crept up on me over a period of years until I was ten to fifteen pounds overweight.  I’ve tried weight-watchers, nutri-system, exercise all to no avail, at least eventually, though I lost weight with the first two each time I tried them.

Oddly, only a couple of weeks before the new national guidelines hit the newspapers, I decided to finally make up my own approach.  Eat half of what I would ordinarily.  Add fruits and vegetables to each meal.  Don’t eat in front of the TV.  That’s it.

The key to my approach is, I think, that it is my approach.  I identified three troublesome areas:  too much on my plate each meal, inadequate fruit and vegetables during the non-growing season months and mindless eating while I watched mindless TV.  I figured I could make these modification without feeling deprived and without giving up my favorite foods.  So far, so good.  I’m back in my old pants, using my old belts.  My energy level is up and the amount of work I can do on the treadmill has advanced impressively for me.

So, if my example amounts to anything, it’s this:  identify some dietary problem areas.  Decide on simple, manageable solutions.  Apply them consistently.  Most of all, be kind to yourself.  We all die of something.  We all have times when we look great and when we look terrible.  Befriend the part of you that wants to get real about weight.

Cooking, Health

A Simple Plan

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Winter                                                    Waning Moon of the Cold Month

Chili smells have begun to fall down the stairs and enter my study.  Smells pretty good, especially after  a workout on the treadmill. I’ve up the difficulty by two incline levels over the last week or so and it feels good.  Need to find a personal trainer who can get both Kate and me jump started on a new resistance program.

Also, in dietary news.  I have the found the secret to a healthy weight:  eat less food.  No kidding.  I know.  Obvious, right?  Here’s what I’ve done:  first, I imagined the portion I would cr400_late-summer-2010_0200eat for a meal and cut it in half.  Surprisingly, not a hard thing to do.  Still satisfying.  second, I decided that I had to have a vegetable serving and a fruit serving at every meal.  Again, obvious.  You’re probably already doing it, but I’ve slouched along on the fruit/veggie thing.  Now, each meal.   third, I stopped eating while watching TV.  This is an important change for me because it led to a lot of mindless eating.  Now if I want a snack while watching TV I have to turn off the TV, go make something and eat it in the kitchen at the table.

Oddly enough, this relatively simple minded plan has worked.  I’ve dropped ten pounds + since beginning it.  The good news is that there’s nothing I’ll ever need to stop and it allows me to eat what I want, just less of it.  And, actually, this is something, too, it makes it possible to have two really good meals out of what would have been one and done.  I love that.