• Category Archives Retirement

  • You, Yes You, Are Invited

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                                            Waning Moon of the Winter Solstice

    If you read ancientrails, you’ll likely get an invitation either by e-mail or snail mail or by hand.  But, if you don’t, and you see it here and can come,  please come.  The idea is the more the merrier. Kate’s retiring and we want to mark the occasion with friends of both of us.

    We’ve scheduled the party during the Third Thursday event at the MIA because the museum puts on a different face and has lot of extra activities.  We’ll have appetizers and beverages in the Wells Fargo Room.

    The art work here is a piece I commissioned from Chicago artist, Deb Yankowski, in honor of this transition.   More details to come.

    You’re Invited To An Event

    Coming of Age:  The Art of Retirement

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    She opens her mouth with wisdom

    And the teaching of kindness is on her tongue

    Give her credit for the fruit of her labors

    And let her achievements praise her at the gates.

    (English translation)

    January 20th, 5-9 P.M.  Minneapolis Museum of Art


    Aging Art and Culture Family Friends Retirement 📎and tagged

  • Yo, Yo, Yo

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                                                Full Moon of the Winter Solstice

    (from yesterday)

    Yo, yo, yo.  Merry Christmas.   My stocking today brimmed over with absolutes and passive periphrastics.  Show you how far I am from school.  I’m doing the optional exercises in the back of Wheelock and bought a workbook so I’ll have even more.  Why?  Want to learn this stuff so it stays.  Even with that I know it will require regular work to keep my skills up.  Fortunately, that’s why Jupiter made Ovid.

    Kate has 13 working days until she walks out the door forever as a full-time employee.  She’ll stay on as a casual employee for a couple of years, 4-6 shifts a month, and then after that.  Nada.  Nihil.  Non.

    Today.  I burrowed into Wheelock yesterday.  Guess I’ve found my hobby.  Or, my vocation/avocation.  Into the museum for a Thaw and an Embarrassment tour.  Then back for more Latin.


    Family Holidays Retirement 📎and tagged

  • Still Learning

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                                                    Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

    The moon light, bright in the southern sky, casts shadows, thin skeletons of trees and shrubs splayed out upon the snow.

    This Latin stuff is fun.  Going back and forth among dictionaries, grammars, websites, puzzling out the verbs and the nouns, trying to fit it all together into English, peeking inside Ovid, at least reading Ovid in his native language.  I know it’s weird, but I really enjoy it.

    I feel about it like I feel about art history; I wish I hadn’t waited so long.  On the other hand the two together give this final third of my life mental vitality.  I’m only getting started.

    Oh.  Picked up the novel I’d set aside, about a third done.  It has promise.  Need to find time for it.


    Aging Art and Culture Humanities Myth and Story Retirement 📎and tagged

  • An Actual Art Emergency

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                                     Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

    One story from the MIA storage tour.  On a February morning, after days of below zero weather, the registrar for the permanent collection comes to work.  Blam!  Blam!  Blam!  Vibrations pound the main storage facility.  He hears clinking as Chinese ceramics move in their storage cabinets.  The phone.  “Tell them to stop!”  A burly contractor comes down, a scowl on his face, “Finally we’ve got warm enough weather to compact the soil.  We have to do it to protect the curtain wall of the Target Wing we’re building. What’s the problem?”

    “Oh,”  the registrar says, “Let me show you.”  They walk over to the Chinese ceramics.  “That one, $750,000.  That one, $250,000.”   “Fine.  You have 45 minutes.”

    The registrar calls all registration staff, “We have an actual art emergency.  Drop what you’re doing and come down here.”  45 minutes the T’ang, Song and Ming dynasty ceramics had a location safe from the pounding and the brutal world of building construction continued its work.

    Yet one more meeting designed to get our retirement finances in order before Kate’s retirement.  We’ve got everything lined up, just need to cross ts and dot is.

    A lot to it, but really a lot less than starting, say, a career.  An interesting comparison since the possible 25 to thirty years of life left is a good chunk of a career.  Now our career is to stay alive and not go broke.


    Art and Culture Retirement

  • Up Again

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                                  Waning Thanksgiving Moon

    Here I am, at it again.  Don’t know why this damned tooth/jaw deal has interfered with my sleep this last two nights and not before, but there you are.

    Got pretty serious there on the post below, so I’ll try to stay a bit lighter here in the dark.

    Finished my Latin, english to Latin, yesterday, early, partly because I got up at 4 am or 5 or whatever.  Went back to bed at 9, got up at 11:30.  The whole day seemed off, sort of out of kilter.  Now I’m up again, an insomniac spurred on by the loss of wisdom.  Which, come to think of it, out to do it.

    As Kate comes closer and closer to retirement, January 7th is her date, I can sense a change, a sort of gathering in, nesting beginning.  I just ordered a few books on movies, for example, thinking we might use our Netflix account to watch movies together one night a week, a date but at home.  We’ve also gotten Kate’s quilt operation set up in a sewing room, upstairs, her long arm quilter, downstairs where her sewing room used to be and her piecing table cum storage in the spot we once had a pool table.

    We’ve spent a good bit of time, as I’m sure most do, on our retirement finances, a project not yet finished, with my pension numbers yet to come and Kate’s medicare part D, but we’ll finish before the end of December.

    Given the adequate, but tight fit of our budget in the coming years, we’ll probably travel less, a thought that at one time would have jarred me, but that now I find manageable.  Short trips to visit family, perhaps longer ones up north or down to Chicago, not quite so far away, so much money.  We’ll save up for a trip or two to somewhere interesting:  Churchill, Ontario, the Southwest, but cruises and foreign travel will be difficult.

    In the growing season, of course, we have the bees, the orchard, the vegetable gardens and the flower gardens that we care for together.  We’ll get into the city to the museums, theatre and music more than we have.

    Mostly, though, we’ll enjoy each others company and live not a good deal differently from what we do right now.


    Cinema and Television Family Health Retirement 📎and tagged

  • Not Stepping In The Same River Twice

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                                      Waning Thanksgiving Moon

    Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.  You, too, tiny Tim.

    Stayed up late last night reading a novel about a Chinese detective in Chinatown, NYC.  Not sure how it happened but China has become my favorite country, much like Germany used to be and Russia before that.  Instead of Buddenbrooks I read Romance of the Three Kingdoms, instead of Steppenwolf I read Chinese mysteries.  No more War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, though I could read them again, I choose, as I always have, to plow new ground, read things I have not read before.

    I tend not to read things twice, except poetry.  A big part of reading for me is the journey to somewhere new, following a trail with no known ending, a similar joy to the one I find in traveling, especially to countries where the culture disorients me, leaves me little room for my old ways.

    New disciplines give me a similar boost:  art history, Latin, writing, vegetable gardening, bee keeping, hydroponics.  I’m sure I miss something in my search for the novel, which may explain why I find living in the same house for 16 years, driving the same car for 16 years, being married to Kate for 20+ years soothing.  As Taoism teaches,  life is a dynamic movement between opposites, the new and the old, the familiar and the strange, the taxing and the comfortable.  The juice flows as the pulls of masculine and feminine, life and death, youth and age keep us fresh, vital.

    My buddy Mario uproots himself and moves along the earth’s surface, finding new homes and new encounters.  He changes his work with apparent ease, finding new friends and new experiences as he does.  Brother Jim, Dusty, constantly challenges his present and his past, leaving himself always slightly off balance.  Both of these men take the juice and mold it into art.

    There are many ancientrails through this life, including intentional disorientation, familiar surroundings, ambition, compassion, politics, nurturance, keen observation, delight, dance.  The key lies in finding yours and staying with it, getting to know it and to be it.

    When you can, you will find every day (well, most days) are Thanksgiving.


    Aging Art and Culture Asia Bees Dreams Faith and Spirituality Family Friends Great Work Memories Retirement 📎and tagged

  • Life

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                       Waxing Thanksgiving Moon

    Another morning spent worrying our post-retirement budget, trying to make it fit our post-retirement income.  We’ll be able to do it and we’ll be fine: enough to eat, space and place to do things we love, but, like most folks, we won’t have as much as we would like.  Fancy trips don’t look too likely anymore.   Instead we’ll be splurging on long term care insurance, medicare part d and automobile insurance.  See a theme here?

    In this recession or technically post recessionary time those are huge pluses.  We’ll be able to contribute to the health of the planet, too, as well as sharing the arts with others, each in our own way.  Life continues and that, by itself, is good.


    Aging Health Retirement 📎and tagged

  • Sheepshead

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                               Waxing Thanksgiving Moon

    The card gods were pretty good to me.  I had some good hands, some good luck and a lot of fun tonight at sheepshead.  We had a great evening with a lot of laughter.  It’s nice to be with guys who can see the humor in their own lives.

    The wisdom teeth began to throb tonight, a bit surprising after a calm period since the extraction.  I’ve felt fatigued and a bit spacy, but no real pain until today.

    I will be happy when Kate’s work is done in early January and she goes on casual time.  Having her here will make our home feel more vital.

    Over the weekend I plan to put the bees to rest for the winter and make some more soup with the last of the leeks.  Latin tomorrow.


    Aging Bees Family Friends Retirement 📎and tagged

  • The Better Part of Wisdom?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                               Waxing Thanksgiving Moon

     

    Wisdom teeth.  Well, I still have a couple.  A while back I had the first two yanked out, but the ensuing weekend and week made me hold off on the other two.  Until now.  Faced with the imminent loss of dental insurance, or at least a changed plan, I asked my dentist what he thought I could do now to help my dental health long term.  The wisdom teeth, he said, out.

    So, this morning out they come.  I woke up early this morning, a bit nervous I guess.  My goal, in general, is to stay away from the medical profession (except for my lovely wife), but once in a while it’s unavoidable.  Like today.

    Wondering about wisdom teeth, I took a quick poke around the web and found a dentistry site that identified wisdom teeth as vestigial.  Interesting.  Seems at one point our diet consisted of much more abrasive material which needed the third molar to help grind it down.  Back then we didn’t need extra fiber in the diet, I’m guessing.  Now jaws stay fuller*, our diet’s smoother and we don’t create space by losing permanent teeth, thanks to modern dentistry.

    Around 9:15 the procedure begins.  Oh, boy.

    *Until quite recently, our diet included mostly very coarse food, as well as impurities such as dirt and sand. This coarseness would abrade teeth so significantly that they would take up less space in the jaw.


    Aging Health Retirement 📎and tagged

  • Getting Closer

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                          Waxing Thanksgiving Moon

    Kate spent 3+ hours at a sewing workshop, creating place mats.  They’re beautiful.  She’s done a lot recently to kick her sewing up another notch, learning how to use the embroidery module on her Bernina, assembling her machine quilter, making more difficult quilts, turning out purses of her own design, going to classes, joining a quilting guild and signing up for road trips to various quilt shops.  She sews a lot, disappearing into her sewing room and working for hours at a stretch, often oblivious to time.  She gets in flow.

    She’s a bare month and half + a few days from retirement and she’s ready.  Her casual time will be only 4 work units or so a month with plenty of flexibility.

    Our day-to-day lives will probably change little, except Kate won’t be leaving for work at any point during the day.  Once she’s retired, I plan to drive the truck in the winter and let the red car ride out the icy season in the garage.  It’s not the best on snow and ice.  That sort of thing, otherwise we’ll cook, tend the garden, do our creative work, travel some, volunteer here and there.

    Living, not retiring.


    Aging Family Retirement 📎and tagged