Category Archives: Third Phase

Retirement, Sport, Third Phase

Hustled

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Beltane                                                                             Early Growth Moon

I got hustled.  Kate picked her event for May.  She chose the artist invented 18 hole miniature golf course at the Walker Sculpture Garden.  After a hot dog purchased at the Dog House and eaten on interlocked wooden pic-nic tables, we went into the Flatpak ™ building that houses the golf balls and putters.  Kate chose green and I chose blue.  That was the last time we were equal.

She proceeded to wipe up the spirals and ramps and gravity drops, leaving me, in the end, 10 strokes down, though with a perfectly respectable 67 for 18.  She had a wunderkind 57.  Geez.  Like I said.

A fun outing and something I would not have done without her prodding.  She said it did reconfirm however her inability to play regular golf, too hard on the back.  She always beat me there, too.

The Walker’s got a lot of construction going on, to what end I don’t know.  Lots of covered walkways and shielded work areas.

 

 

 

 

 

Aging, Art and Culture, Music, Third Phase

Technology Is My Friend

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Beltane                                                                      Early Growth Moon

Repeat after me:  technology is our friend.  Again.  Technology is our friend.

A month or so ago I bought a 300 CD carousel player.  This dates me in so many ways.  In the first place to enter memos (we’ll talk about those in a moment) you can use a keyboard, but it’s not a usb connection rather it is the old male/female pin receptor.  Fortunately, in my ever increasing museum of used computing equipment I had one.  Score!

What that means is that I input a memo about each disk using the keyboard rather than the dial and point method necessary without it.  That would have found me tossing the discs in the thing.  Anyhow so I decide to put a memo for each disc because otherwise how could I know what it is?

Well, that means developing a system.   We have a faux Dewey Decimal CD storage piece that has 4 rows across and 6 down of small wooden boxes that hold anywhere from 12 to 15 or so CD’s.  So we named the rows A, B, C, and D.  That means that each CD has to have a box number, so A1 puts the CD case in the upper left hand corner box.  We’re keeping the cases for the liner notes.  But, wait, there’s more.  Each CD has to have its own number in the box so the first CD is A11 then the name of the CD in very short hand.

Another wrinkle develops with multiple sets of which we have many.  For example, we have a 25 CD set of the complete works of Chopin.   In this case, we’re now into the 3rd box, the number was for one disc, A316D24.  The D24 meaning D24 in the Chopin set.  In order to enter this data two buttons on the carousel player have to be punched, then the text entered, then saved.  300 times.  I’m up to 60 right now and have already begun chewing on my foot so I can escape the trap.

Now to the charming reality that this dates me.  First of all, who buys CD’s anymore?  I mean physical objects that store your music and take up space in your house?  What?  Second, you mean you have to manually enter the information about the music?  Why can’t the file just put it up like it does on my I-phone, I-pad, I-pod?  That’s way easier.  Not nearly so much work.  In fact, no work at all.

That’s the frictionless world most digital natives inhabit.  Their idea of a record collection weighs about 5 ounces and has ear buds.  If you want to listen to at home, you just drop it in a receptacle that links your device to your home speaker system.  Easy peasy.

Kate and I, however, inhabit the stubbornly physical recent past.  Which means we were born before this millennium for sure and far back in the 20th century, too.  This is probably the last time we will try to organize our music because if we decide to do it again, I’ll flee to the 20th century in my time machine.  I carry it right here on my belt.

Aging, GeekWorld, Third Phase

Third Phase: Robots

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Beltane                                                                                   Early Growth Moon

Frank and Me is an engaging movie with a quick plot twist at the end that caught me napping, but the intriguing question raised is Frank’s relationship with the robot his son gives him to care for him.

Like most technophiles robots have been on my mind for a long time. Forbidden Planet came out, for example, in 1959 when I was 12.  I read I Robot before that. At the time they seemed much more science fiction, probably only science fiction.  In fact, it is very difficult to convey today the gap between many of those things we saw as science fiction and any reality we ever expected to experience.  Space ships?  With humans aboard?  Moon landing?  Video phone calls?  Robots?  Come on.

As a child of that era and a science fiction oriented one at that, imagine my delight when we land roving robots on Mars.  Mars!  Or, a human made machine leaves the solar system.  The Oort Cloud!  Calling my brother in Saudi Arabia and my sister in Singapore, with moving pictures and both of them on the screen with me at the same time.  Get outta here.

When it comes to the question of how much care we can offer the elderly through robots, I’m jumping up and down.  Let me at’em.  I don’t want to plan robberies with one like Frank did, but I can easily imagine a relationship with a robot.

Some people, Frank Langella, lead actor in Frank and Me among them, think those kind of relationships should be with humans.  A recent Wired article suggested that a fuzzy robot sold now as a companion for Alzheimer’s patients may work too well.  People talk to it.  They bemoan the relationship people might have with the robot.

Why?  I mean, it’s not like we’re going to send people robots and then say, “Now, you have your robot.  Let’s not ever hear from you again.”  No, the robots will be part of a care-giving strategy.  Perhaps they’ll do household tasks and some particular care-giving like medication administration.  Perhaps they’ll be dialogical, with a capacity for learning and different accents.

We pay home health care aides around $20,000 a year.  And there are fewer and fewer signing up for the jobs.  It’s not hard to see why.  This trend has accelerated just as the number of elders in our culture will increase enormously.  I’m glad the Minnesota legislature voted to let child care workers and home health care workers organize.  If they can get better pay, benefits and training, we’ll have more people wanting the work.

But my sense is that even if that sort of improvement changes their lot somewhat, it will still not be enough to meet the needs of people who. like myself, want to age in place.  We can do it, but most of us will need help of some kind.

(Hector, a mobile assistive robot and smart home interface for the elderly.  forbes magazine)

It seems to me that a joint work force of robots and better paid home health care aides is a big step toward solving the problem of affordable care for the rapidly increasing elderly population. And I will welcome it.

I think back to Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock.  He suggested we were moving toward a High Tech, High Touch society.  That is, the more technologically sophisticated we become, in the same proportion we become eager for human contact, need human contact.

Those who write about the elderly and robots always seem to paint things as either/or.  Either we increase the number of in home health care workers or we use robots.  No, we’ll do both.  And we’ll love it.

I want mine for my 70th birthday.

 

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Memories, Third Phase

The Numinous

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Beltane                                                                         Early Growth Moon

One of the problems with the Self model I proposed yesterday is that it is sticky.  When the ego has its way, which it wants to do all the time, feelings and thoughts gum up the mental works, a problem that zen and other meditative disciplines can correct, or, at least, diminish.  Example.  Waking up at 4:50 am this morning, then running through the evening at Tom’s 35th anniversary gig.  Nothing in particular, just this thought then that thought, which might lead to an emotion which can careen off in another direction.

This not unusual for me, neither is it usual.  It happens.  Rather than eliminate the self to control the ego I choose to say, it happens.  And not worry the matter beyond that.  Then I can move on, albeit with less sleep than I might desire, but I can always–and always do–take a nap.

At 10:30 I see John Desteian, my analyst (Jungian), of long standing and we will discuss the numinous.  At least that’s the question for the day:  what is the essence of the numinous?  I’ve had some time to reflect on that since John and I last met.

Rudolf Otto invented the term numinous in his book, The Idea of the Holy.  In this book he wanted to get at the non-rational aspects of religion, the holy and the sacred being the usual terminology for it.  He felt these words had a lot of baggage and had gotten confused in the up take of rationalists who wrote theology, did historical criticism of biblical texts and generally tried to shoehorn the  whole of the religious experience into the reason paradigm forcefully advanced by Enlightenment thinkers and the newly regnant science.  Otto wrote in 1909.

The numinous is his word for the dimension of the holy and the sacred not touchable by reason, yet crucially important to their lived reality.  Jung, born in 1903, came to Otto’s work with a deep respect for the small r religious life and adopted the numinous as critical to his understanding of psychology.

Thus, the question, what is the essence of the numinous?  As I see it right now, the numinous is an affective response to an experience of the other, an example of which would be the ego experiencing the Self.  The ego, as the command and control center of the psyche, believes it has full authority for advancement of its priorities, but not so.  The ego works best and accomplishes the most when subservient to the overall needs of the Self.

That is, the ego wants to arrange matters to optimize the survival and flourishing of what it perceives to be me, the sense of I that has the most developmental history, and also the sense of I most invaded by cultural or personal expectations that may not advance the interest of the Self, but may try (too often successfully) to bend the Self toward the goal of career, ambition, money, fame, power.  This bending or truncating of the Self in service of needs defined by externals–the culture or persons influential in the individual’s history–leads to deep unhappiness, a sense (and the reality) of betraying one’s Self.

The power of the numinous comes in its ability to challenge the mundane priorities of the ego.  Note, the ego’s priorities are not bad or wrong.  To the contrary, they are in line with the need to survive and, within limits, to thrive.  Those limits are, interestingly, the places where the needs of the Self conflict with received expectations, either cultural or from your personal history.  In other words, the unexamined ego will take me down the path of whatever expectation hollers loudest.

When the numinous, the whole Self, (or God, or Brahma, or shunyata) intervenes, it enlists the ego’s powers of organization, protection and survival and marshals them in a more holistic direction, that is, fulfillment of dreams and hopes that connect the individual to the collective, not in the sense of overpowering it or coming to dominate it, but in a manner that synchronizes the gifts of the individual with the needs of the many.

This change of direction can be terrifying, can seem like abandonment of everything mom and dad taught, of those very things the culture says are most desirable, and such a direction threatens the individual with isolation and failure.  The most familiar direction seems safest and an experience of the numinous challenges it.

 

 

 

Art and Culture, Cooking, Great Work, Latin, Third Phase, Writing

Gotta Get Out More

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Beltane                                                                              Early Growth Moon

My docent class is on a 5 day jaunt to Chicago.  Were it not for Kona’s vet visits, I’d be there, too.  This is a full week now since I sent in my resignation to the MIA.  Nada.  Silence.  Nothing.  12 years.  Almost as weird as the weather.  It’s like the Institute has organizational autism.

It’s been a full day with work outside and inside, a quiet evening reading.

Though I can see that the chained mornings and the Latin in the mid-afternoons is very productive, I’m also seeing a desire in myself to get out more.  Kate had to sort of drop kick me into it, but now that she has I realize the path I’ve chosen will increasingly isolate me and us, if we’re not very intentional about getting out.

To that end I signed up us for a fund raiser for CSA Roots, apparently the former Community Design Center with which I did a lot of work in the late 70’s and early 80’s.  This fund-raiser features a hand-crafted, all locally sourced meal at the Heartland Restaurant across from the former site of the St. Paul Farmer’s Market.  Appropriately enough the dinner is on June 21st, the Summer Solstice.

We’re also planning a trip into the American Swedish Institute this week to see the Sami exhibition and eat at the Institutes new restaurant.  Hmmm.  Do most of our activities involve food?  Which by the way is ok since I’ve lost at least 14 pounds on this lower carb diet in addition to increasing the nutrient load of my food consumption and, the point of it, lowering my blood sugar well below levels of concern.

 

 

Art and Culture, Garden, Politics, Third Phase

Pruning. Good-Bye to the MIA

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Beltane                                                                             Planting Moon

Pruning allows a shrub or tree to put its energy into productive growth whether it is a stronger trunk or better fruit.  It’s important to prune when a plant gets overgrown or has grown in ways that cut off the flow of air through the branches.  It’s also important to keep a tree, especially fruit trees, at productive sizes, ones where the tree puts its energy into apples, cherries, plums and where the fruit can be harvested easily.

This common garden activity, however, often confronts the gardener with a task for which they feel ill prepared and perhaps a bit nervous.  If I prune too much, will I kill the plant?  You can.  What do I take off?  Why?  It’s not unusual for home gardeners to skip this chore because it feels laden with risk while doing nothing seems to avoid harm.

The third phase requires pruning.  Leaving a job or a career is an act of pruning.  A move to a smaller home is an act of pruning.  Deciding which volunteer activities promote life and which encumber can proceed an act of pruning.

Last year I set aside my political work with the Sierra Club.  Today I have set aside my work at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.  This is pruning, too, and the kind of pruning necessary at this point for me.

The branches that I want to grow strong are my writing and my translation of Ovid.  They both require regular, sustained hours on a week by week basis.  Both the Sierra Club and the MIA took me away from that concentration.

These were not decisions I made likely, nor are they decisions I made without a sense of loss. In the case of the Sierra Club I gave up my sense of political agency, long a hallmark of my life.  With the MIA I’m giving up a chance to be with kids and adults on tours and the regular stimulation of art in my life.  These are not trivial for me.

Yet.  In this last phase of life I want to focus my efforts in ways that give me a chance to succeed, instead of scattering them in the interest of multiple passions.

 

Third Phase

Coming of Old Novels

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Beltane                                                                                          Planting Moon

As I fed the dogs this morning, the upcoming Woolly retreat came into focus and I thought about the third phase.  For some reason coming of age novels popped into mind.  These novels, ever since the novel’s appearance, have been perennial favorites:  Jane Eyre, David Copperfield, Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird.

And why?  Because the transition from the (relative) innocence of childhood to young adult is fraught with emotionally difficult moments, surprising new insights and ushers out into a time with the landscape renewed and the horizon pleasingly far away.

Tying it loosely to the first phase, second phase, third phase notion, coming of age novels are about the transition from learner to doer, from the first phase of education to the second phase of adult life and career.

Working life novels also abound.  Arrowsmith.  Pale King by David Wallace.  Any of the many novels of academia.  Most mysteries and thrillers are set in the world of work.  Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities.  These novels are not as universal in their appeal and I imagine the fragmentation of life’s paths after coming of age accounts for that.  We’re not all interested in doctors, or masters of the universe, or professors, but; we are all interested in what it feels like to grow up because it’s a common experience.

So.  What of novels about the third phase?  Novels about living life with neither the end of education nor the end of work as the terminus, but about living life with The Terminus as the end.  Scrolling through some lists I did find some interesting works cited:  King Lear, Job, Doctor Faustus, A Christmas Carol.  All fine pieces.

But.  If we’re right about the third phase as a new phase of life equivalent to the other two, then simply growing old and dying is not enough as a plot line.  No, what I would like to see are coming of old novels.  Novels about making the startling transition from the adulthood of the second phase to the adulthood of the third phase.  We need these novels, poems, movies, music to help us navigate new, uncharted waters.

 

Garden, Politics, Third Phase, US History

Pioneers

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Spring                                                                        Planting Moon

Finally, my activities and the turning of the Great Wheel will synch up.  Gonna plant cold weather crops today.  The soil’s still cold though the air will warm this week, only to cool down again next.  It’s important to remember that our average last frost date is the beginning of the second week of May and we haven’t gotten there yet.  No transplants outside yet.

Except.  The leek and onion I got in the mail Thursday and Friday.

Kate and I will be a pair out there today, trying to figure out which of us should do what to lessen the likelihood of pain.

As the planting has approached, I’ve pondered, as I have often, the fate of pioneers* who wrenched a back, had disc problems, sprained an ankle, broke an arm at the wrong time of year.  Not that there’s a right time of year, but some times are worse than others.  Planting and harvesting would be terrible times to have a significant physical impairment.  Can you imagine?  Your life and perhaps your family’s depends on planting this year’s crop.

What is today a nuisance, a bother, something to wait out, could have been literally fatal, and not just for one.  I’m sure everybody pitched in, did what they could, but sexual dimorphism and physical development from child to adult would often mean some work simply couldn’t be done.

A bleak prospect.

I can load up on Ultram, lace up the backbrace and then, if necessary, go to the grocery store and buy my vegetables.  The options are better today.

 

*And, yes, I recognize the irony between the pioneers and the Native Americans, the latter  having developed their styles of living off the land in accordance with the way the land provided, at least for the most part.  The pioneers, most of them anyhow, were usually poor folks hunting for a place to live and raise a family.  This phenomenon of the poor spreading out to the places of least convenience continues in our day.

I no longer know how to easily understand the right and wrong of it all.  Yes, the Indian Wars were wrong.  Of course.  And the associated Indian schools and all of it.  Wrong.

The pioneers, though?  They don’t seem wrong to me, perhaps not right in a larger, probably undiscernible sense (for them), but not wrong.  At least not most.  Most were Okies.  Cox’s army.  Peasant class folks hungering for a chance.  For them, I have a lot of empathy.

The question today is not how to go back and redo the past. Rather, it is how to discern the lines that will allow us all to walk into the future together, as friends and allies.

Aging, Feelings, Third Phase

Ruts and Graves

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Spring                                                                            Planting Moon

 

The only difference between a grave and rut are the dimensions.  Oh?  At least when you’re in a rut you can still breathe.  Breathing means hope.  Nothing definite, for sure, but hope.

This cliche points at a perceived truth, that being stuck in sameness is a living death.  And you can certainly how that might be true.  Work at a convenience store, come home, warm up a tv dinner, grab a beer, fall asleep in the recliner.  Get up and do it again.

Or drive into the city, park the expensive car in the expensive parking slot ride the elevator up to a posh office, direct, command, leave and drive the expensive car home to the expensive house.  Get up and do it again.

Sure.  That can mean a restricted, narrowed way of greeting this vast opportunity called life.  But.  People like me find certain routines soothing, they pave the way for creative activity, for hard concentration.  Routines allow the needs to be taken care of.  That way the non-routine acts of writing, scholarship, thinking, close looking and reading can happen on their own rhythms.

I like the bowl of fruit, some cottage cheese and a tomato in the morning, reading the paper, having some tea, then heading downstairs to start work.  I suppose you could call that a rut, the food boring, the repetition bland, I find it nourishing and centering.  You say cereal, I have tomato.

My opinion?  Pick your routines and habits carefully, make sure they support the things you do that matter the most, not the other around.  Then reinforce them as much as you can.  If you’re like me, that is.

Aging, Health, Third Phase

Ah. He said.

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Spring                                                                       Planting Moon

I apologize for the long series of posts on my back and my shoulder and my angst.  In part they come because this blog has replaced my long habit of keeping written journals, so you get what happens, if you’re a reader here.

In part they come because they track my progress (regress?  slide?  decline?) into the later years when the body repairs itself less quickly.  In part they come, mostly they come, because they are what is foremost to me at the moment.

Still, I know such posts can turn off readers who also suffer from their aches and pains, their own flurries of difficult to handle matters, their own angst.  All I can say is that this an ancientrail, too, one followed by so many, most, maybe, probably by all.  So it is not about me I write, but us inflected at the moment by an Oklahoma born, Indiana raised, Minnesota preferred man and his 66 year old body.

Though my back feels somewhat better I am now weary, tired from the last week plus, probably allowing myself to be tired because Kate’s on her way home.  Now I will be able to  focus on recovering, not recovering, reinjuring and managing.  Looking forward to it.