• Category Archives Aging
  • Aging Resistance

    Yule and the 78th Birthday Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Diane, healing. New computer getting setup. New ottoman. Studying parsha Bo. With Zohar and Zornberg. Finished reading Conclave. Now another Gray Man. PSA stable. Kidney functions a bit off. A1-C a bit high. Nothing too concerning to me. Vince. Alan coming to Conifer this morning. Talking with Tom. My life as a conversational flaneur. Moods. Emotions. Art Green. My son and Seoah coming. A birthday this month. Year of the Snake.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Mussar friends

    Kavannah 2025: Creativity

    Kavannah this week: Rachamim, compassion  practice-listen for the melody of the other

    One brief shining: Aging resistance, a less frenzied, hot breath sorta response, a more relaxed, we can survive this attitude, yet still feeling to me like my way is to call out certain actions, especially those injurious to the planet and vulnerable people, while also tending these seed packets: pluralism, globalism, economic and racial justice, feminism, importance of the common good, support for the individual and individualism.

     

    This political disaster feels different from the first Trump infection. Even though he may be sort of more organized with Plan 2025 held in his French fry greasy hand, his Burger King kid’s meal crown slouched rakishly on his orange haired head, and even though he and his cronies have-who can pass up the sports metaphor, football!-flooded the zone; as someone I read in the Washington Post said this is the imitation of competence. In reality it’s a scatter shot series of nods to the base: no to birthright citizenship, freeze all Federal money going out, hammer General Milley, Hegsteth, Kennedy, Gabbard.

    This is not governing. It’s the politics of petty revenge. We’ll have to wait for days, those famous first hundred days, to see the metamorphosis, if any, of our nation’s institution. At some point the executive order Sharpie, a Sharpie!, will have to rest and cousin Donald will have to try for legislation. Court fights will be ongoing. We don’t know what’s happening quite yet.

    This much I do know. My world, a world in which meanness and cruelty have a bad connotation, a world where the American dream of a people joined together by adherence to the idea of equal opportunity, equality before the law, of a nation that welcomes the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free, will not perish.

    We will tend with care the seeds of this remarkable and yes flawed experiment. Seeds like the Constitution. Also flawed, yet a reminder in its amendments and in the expansion of its protection through the courts, that it is our flawed document. Seeds like FDR’s New Deal which expanded the Federal Government’s role as protector of the least of those among us. Seeds like our liberal Christian churches, synagogues, mosques, Buddhist temples and retreat centers. Seeds like our academic institutions, like the NIH and the CDC. Seeds like our real history: slavery, slaughter of the indigenous, colonialism and those who have stood against these sins of our fathers and mothers now passed down to us the third and fourth and fifth and sixth generations.

    And we will tend to ourselves and each other. Not allowing despair to take hold for too long. Encouraging the forms of declaring our dream still alive and vibrant. Supporting those who take up direct action. Donating funds. Showing up at protests and marches. Maybe forming bookclubs that focus on American history, on the American renaissance, on American authors of all colors, gender preferences, and religious backgrounds.

    We are not down. We are not out. Our dream still guides this nation. We just have to  help people wake up to the chances to embrace it.


  • Aging and its cultured despisers

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Phonak. Amy. Mile High Hearing. All body workout today. The Outpost. Emunah. Snow. Cold. A Mountain Winter. Still light on Snow. The Churning of the Sea of Milk. Angkor Wat. Siem Reap. Cambodia. The Mekong. Brother Mark on his way to Saudi. Eleanor, the Dog. Tara. Friendship. Men. CBE.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Eleanor, fluffy kind energy

    Kavannah for 2025: Creativity

    Kavannah for this January 7th life: Understanding. Bina

    One brief shining: How many moments of wind carrying cold air over my bald head have to happen for me to have a good night’s sleep; or, how high do I have turn up the electric blanket which pleases me for reasons I cannot define; or, how much peace in my stomach and in my heart leads my mind into slowing down and slipping away into human sleep mode.

     

    Here is the illustration inspired by Hokusai, depicting the essence of aging and Elderhood in a serene, nature-filled setting.

    OK. Here’s a new pet peeve. Super agers. No, I’m not dissing them, whomever they are, for having won a genetic or geographic (blue zones) or good luck lottery. Good for them. Banners and candles and whatever else goes with it. Huzzah! Might we learn something valuable from their lives? I suppose so.

    No. The peeve I have lies in the way we valorize certain individuals, lift them up as exemplars for what aging can be. That can have the effect, like all the hoohah about diet and exercise, of diminishing the perfectly normal aging most of us will experience.

    The vast, vast bulk of us, somewhere north of 99.9% I imagine, live our lives doing the best we can, making decisions that impact our overall health in many ways, some good some not so good and often living out the consequences of a genetic heritage in which we had no choice.

    Super agers. Centenarians. The tail of the bell curve, the one sloping to the right. Are they our role models? What about the poor bastards on the other end of the curve with disabilities of all kinds. With limited resources to realize the dreams of the American Immortal.

    I do not consider myself poor because I have less money than Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. And more importantly I don’t want to have that money. It’s not a perfect analogy of course.

    Would l want to have the supple brain and over-70 Olympian’s body of these wunderkind of the Sun City set? Yes. I would. Didn’t happen for me. Am I a less good person, is my aging somehow less than? No. I’m at 77 and-here’s the comparison I like-above ground and taking nourishment.

    What I’m pleading for here is a way to accept and celebrate aging in all its varieties, all its super and non-super manifestations. There’s no one way to do aging right. There’s your way and my way and, yes, the way of the .001%. Everybody who manages to slip past, say 65, deserves the honor and recognition of Elderhood, something our society, our individualistic, youth oriented, success infested society has drained away from us. To its peril.

    End of rant.


  • May you feel safe and secure

    Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

    Sunday gratefuls: Great Sol warming the Snow until it rises into Air. Lodgepole Branches almost cleared. Colorado Winters. A backyard though with 20″ or so piled around the Lodgepole Trunks. Headlines and shaking heads. Gathering ourselves for what must come next.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Jackie

    Kavannah: contentment and joy

    One brief shining: Studied Torah yesterday online with Jamie and Luke and Irene, Avram and Sarai leaving Ur of the Chaldeas and heading off into the unknown, Avram’s thoughts gathered from wondering about the Stars and their origins pushing them out of a place where Gods had faces and could be carried from place to place into a place and an encounter with a world and life unknown to them.

     

    Yes, a dangerous, felonious, misogynist who runs with a crowd of would be Kluxers has changed again the double meaning of the White House. A brute fact as philosophers and scientists alike would say. Yes, he has shown the world a decided and never gone shadow side of American life. Some of us fear the other and when pressed hard enough by circumstance dire or perceived to be so we allow it to surface, even take control.

    In this election both sides. Both sides feared. Feared the other and allowed our shadow sides to guide us through the political maneuvering that led to Nov. 5, 2024. Those of us who thought long red tie guy was the problem let our fear out as scorn, as dismissal, as heads shaking. No, it can’t happen. They’re too stupid and he’s too venal.

    The other side feared us, too. Because they thought we might win again, continue pressing on them the things they feared. Symbolized by trans folks, LBGT folk, women who demanded control over their bodies and their lives, strangers piling across the borders hoping for some of what they held onto so tenuously.

    The oligarchs had lessons in Europe about how to play their instruments. The cello of immigrants diluting and cheating. The oboe of women’s traditional roles. The drums of racial purity. The piccolo of blood and soil nationalism. Violin cadenzas of sexual normality.

    And we stood aside, complacent in our truth. Holding onto disparagement of the ignorant others. Wrapped in our cloaks of decency and righteousness. In that sense true elites. An aristocracy bred of our ignorance of the economic lives of others.

    We ignored economic hardship of those essential workers. Remember them? The grocery clerk. The convenience store worker. The bus driver. The Amazon warehouse employee. The police officer and the snowplow driver. The former factory worker turned Walmart greeter or holding down a McJob.

    And we lost our way.

    I hope the seed-keepers among us can call to mind the mother aghast at her supermarket receipt. The commuter who cringes at the cost of yet another tank full of gasoline. The renter whose housing costs rises into a choice between home and food. The anguish of one facing illness only to become burdened by regular unpayable bills showing up in the mail.

    Long red tie guy has promised to cure these ills. He will not. He cannot because his fealty is to his narrow slice of peers, people who do not have these problems. He only played the Piper’s tune. The Billionaires March instead is what he hears and follows.

    There are miles to go. Miles to go before we sleep and as we walk each other home let those miles be filled with love, justice, and compassion. Or, as a group of my friends presciently claimed years ago: Leadership.

     

     

     


  • An American Sannyasa

    Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

    Friday gratefuls: Snow, and more Snow on the way. Harris and Waltz. Liberals. And, radicals. Politics. Changing in big ways. History. Always moving and shifting. The One, taking it all in and forming a new world. Cold nights. Diane. Tom. Irv. Paul. My son. Seoah. Murdoch. Shadow Mountain. A Snow globe week.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Purpose

    Kavannah for election week: contentment and joy

    One brief shining: May have seemed odd to you that I chose contentment and joy as my intentions for election week, that most fractious and unhappy of weeks for one side or another, may have seemed odd especially to have continued with them after the elevation of an anti-liberal mean of our collective culture; yet, I have found them good for me, instead of being angry about a situation now beyond my reach, I have been able to draw to myself a lesson about my life’s purpose.

     

    A while back I borrowed the idea of a fourth phase of life from the Hindus.* I don’t define it in the same way, but I find the idea of a stage after retirement-our version of the forest dweller stage-makes sense.

    The commonality between my view and Hinduism’s lies in death and acceptance. Readiness for death and seeing it as not only somewhat imminent, but as welcome.

    This week I not only learned that the orange one will be our next President. I also learned that my cancer is not aggressive, and not hormone resistant. Which gives me a longer possible lifespan. And, I’m glad. Even so. Death lies over the horizon, but not nearly as far as it used to.

    I would not know if I was fully enlightened and I’m not detached. I may have some wisdom but that’s for others to know, not me.

    The rise of a populist anti-liberal agenda, a rise that came with unexpected force, has clarified my fourth phase. Though I am a Forest dweller and though that remains a central part of who I am, I passed, as I said a week or so ago, into Sannyasa when diagnosed with prostate cancer. Over the almost ten years since then I’ve been conflicted at a core level.

    Some of the conflicts. In but not of Judaism. No longer an activist but feeling like I should be one. Wanting to hike in the mountains but being constrained first by shortness of breath, now by a gimpy back too. Wanting to travel more. But. See s.o.b and back. Learning to live without Kate and without dogs.

    Resolutions. Converted to Judaism. Election 2024 has made see my role in culture and politics. I am a seed-keeper, not an activist anymore. (If this isn’t cultural appropriation. I hope not because it fits so well.) Hiking and traveling. Can do some with good drugs and patience, but it’s never gonna be easy for me again. I have lived into a life without Kate and without dogs. Difficult, of course. At times it still is. Yet I have a Herme Harari Israel life defined now:  An introverted Mountain man who struggles with God. However you want to fill the God bucket. Or, even if you want to live it empty.

    So I will continue to write. Continue to read. Continue to study mussar and be with my CBE friends. Continue to love them and my other friends and family. All this is enough for me. My fourth phase. An American Sannyasa.

     

    *Brahmacharya The student stage, when one focuses on learning and gaining knowledge. This stage is the time before puberty and up until marriage.

    Grihastha The householder stage, when one is occupied with family and household matters. This stage is when one starts a family and maintains a healthy marriage.

    Vanaprastha The forest dweller stage, when one retires from business as usual.

    Sannyasa The stage of renunciation, when one is wise and fully enlightened, detached from everything, and ready for death. A Sannyasi is a religious ascetic who has renounced the world by performing their own funeral and abandoning all claims to social or family standing. 


  • Contentment and Joy

    Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

    Monday gratefuls: Dr. Buphati. Snow. 4-5 inches. Powder. Or, as the skiers say: Pow. Vikings win. The Ancient Brothers. Walking Each Other Home. Mark in K.L. The Brickfields. The lives of all the Wild Neighbors. Everywhere. And, all the domesticated Animals. The Great Wheel. The Tarot. Kabbalah. Living in joy. Cosmic voids. Sculpture. Rodin. Brancusi.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: First substantial Snow of the season

    Kavannah for election week: Contentment and Joy

    One brief shining: At night I crank open the casement window over my bed, letting in the  smell of Lodgepoles and Grass as the Night Air streams over my head, when Snow begins to fall like it did last night Snowflakes come through the screen, shower me in a light experience of the weather outside, and often, like last night, make the window hard to close.

     

    Without knowing. Without certainty. I claim today my joy and my contentment. I seek today those moments that delight my heart, tickle my inner child. Like my Lodgepole Companion holding the powdery Snow as an early seasonal decoration. Thinking of lights, Christmas and Diwali and Hanukah and Kwanza and Yule. Remembering sliding down the hill at the end of Monroe Street and taking my sled over the jumps we kids created. Of the farm outside of Nevis, Minnesota on a Snowy day, air-tight stove crackling with good, dense Oak logs, the cook stove boiling water for coffee. Of standing by the Shadow Mountain kitchen window with Kate by my side, watching the Snow come down. How lucky we are to live here, she would say. Yep, I would reply.

    Also enough coffee in the pot this morning for a full cup. The mini-splits keeping the house warm. An early Dawn, at least according to the clock. Life, this precious and wonderful gift.

    Reading, that most amazing skill. Example: The Emptiness of the Universe Gives Our Lives Meaning. I loved this short piece. The cosmologist Paul Sutter chose for his life work the study of cosmic voids. The apparently empty spots between and among galaxies, local clusters, superclusters. How innovative and creative, to study negative space. It’s as if an art historian chose to study only the negative space in sculpture, in paintings. Or a musicologist specializing in rests and stops.

    I am content. I’ll have Fire in the Fireplace tonight. Toss some Pinōn on for a scent treat, thinking of the clay stoves in the corners of rooms in New Mexico. I’ll have a good book, probably An Unfinished Love Story by Doris Kearns-Goodwin recommended by Marilyn.

    I’ll take in what Dr. Buphati has to say at 2:30 today and I will see it as the next steps necessary to claim the life I have yet to live. Not as the first steps toward death. Which comes anyhow.

    Realized the other day that after my Bar Mitzvah, literally the day after when I had my unsettling telehealth visit with Kristie, I’ve been living with the notion of a shortened life span, an inner focus on decline. So much so that I gave up exercising. Wanted to privilege spontaneity.

    My year of living Jewishly had its capstone moment and I voluntarily took the steps down into my Cloud of unknowing. And reified it. Since that day, June 12th of this year, until last week, I’ve had a focus on less than, what would soon be missing. Me. I made a pivot from a deep plunge into Judaism to a dive into the shallow end of lack. Broke my heart for a while.

    Then I began to understand that the Cloud of unknowing was the true and only way to view life. Whether shorter or longer, I don’t know. As has always been the case. I came up from the mikveh a Jew. I came up from the shallow end of lack attentive again to today, to this life as I have it now. As I will until I don’t.

    Herme Harari Israel


  • My Recipe

    Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: My good and fulfilling life. Dogs. All Dogs. Especially Kep, Gertie, Rigel, and Vega. The Colorado Dogs. Kate, always Kate. Her smile. Ginny and Janice. Laughing. Television. A lot of very good material in Jennie’s Dead. That silly fan light. Neon gone dark for now. Vince. Fingers that still type with ease. Eyes that see. Ears? Well…

    Sparks of joy and awe: Senses

    Kavannah: Joy

    One brief shining: It’s his birthday week, my son, far away in Songtan, Korea, turning 43 in the same week as his CT scans and blood work, checking for damage caused by Hep B which he contracted at birth, leaning in to his work keeping our ally safe, mentoring his airmen and women, prepping for the switch to command next year, Murdoch follows him from room to room, sleeping at his feet.

     

    On Friday I drove down the hill to Mile High Hearing, lower, much lower than I am here on Shadow Mountain, to see Amy, my soccer coaching audiologist. Three year mark on the Phonak which works very well for me. Warranty ending. No thanks to extended warranty. I get to send it back to the folks at Phonak for a refurbishing. What’s a refurbishing, I ask? Oh, they basically replace everything with new parts. Huh? Then I figured it out. They’re three years away from this model technologically. This is a way to cheaply enhance their products with now outdated parts, making it more likely I’ll choose Phonak again. Smart.

    I have a loaner hearing aid now. How bout that?

     

    First. Know yourself. Live from that self. Be authentic. Take the hits, take the applause but stay true to who you are. As life begins to lengthen, do more and more of what brings you joy. Shed the gloom as best you can. Knowing that life flees so rapidly.

    Second. Be content with the Self that you are. Be content with what you have. Learn the meaning of the word enough. Act on that.

    Third: Work, yes work, at sustaining and maintaining key relationships: partner, family, friends. Spend time with all of them, time with laughter and tears and wonderings and dreams.

    Fourth: Meditate on your corpse. Take a dia de los muertos attitude toward death. A phase change. And, a certainty. Sad and painful when it’s ones you love, a one person journey for your authentic, unafraid Self. Celebrate this punctuation mark. Grieve it. And greet it.

    Fifth: Dance and clap. Twirl and grin. Laugh as much as you can. Do what hones the gifts you have. Use those same gifts for the world and for your own health.

    Sixth: Don’t worry about your legacy. Hold your life and your health lightly. See number four.

    That should do it. My recipe for a fulfilling and good life. Whether it’s a happy one or not doesn’t matter. Happiness and hope are illusory, momentary, wisps of the heart. Stick to what matters. Living your life. You’re the only one who can and we all need the unique presence you are.


  • Why I hope to die at 75

    Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Dr. Buphati. Cancer genetics. More treatment options. Do they make sense? Even exercise? Why I hope to die at 75. Encourage any of you to read this, tell me what you think. Jennie’s Dead. Further into reading, some revising. The American Immortal. Great Sol. Dependable. Brilliant. Warm and caring. A good parent. Mother Earth. Tempestuous and nurturing. An exciting parent. Those of us their children. Living as their creations. Aware of them and grateful for the gift of life and consciousness. Evolution, their primary parenting technique, has stood the test. And will continue too. Did you really think we were the end of evolution? It’s highest and best? Nope.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Medical care

    Kavannah: Yirah

    Dr. Buphati

    One brief shining: Seen a lot of rooms like this over the last few years, first with my cancer, then with Kate, now with my cancer yet and still; this one belongs to Dr. Buphati, a medical oncologist, young, well respected, thoughtful, objective, who spoke with me yesterday not half a block from the 10th floor of Swedish Hospital where Kate died, telling me it’s not time to have dying conversations yet, so many treatment options still exist, no matter my PSA which he drew blood for, eager to get at it, and for the DNA of my cancer itself, so he can see if treatments tailored to the cancer’s DNA might be part of future plans, a kind man, and yet when I left his office a full body sadness took root in me and stayed until I got home. And after that, too.

     

    After my visit to my friend Sunday, seeing the end stage of life enduring past awareness focused on faux Fall pixels for hours and hours, after reading through the article by U. of Pennsylvania oncologist, Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Why I hope to die at 75, after my root and branch sadness, not despair, not depression, but weariness with the drumbeats of impending doom, after watching TV as an analgesic for psychic distress, and after a good night’s sleep in the cool Mountain temperatures of mid-fall in the Rockies, I’m wondering whether to adopt, perhaps in a modified for me form, the philosophy Emanuel presents.

    I’m already there with the DNR order, only pain and suffering care at the end. I’m getting palliative care already for my spinal stenosis. If I read his article correctly, he wants to move toward only palliative care after 75. That would mean, in my case, forgoing anymore tests for other illnesses, any vaccines, probably anymore cancer treatment except for palliative care, giving up exercise and fussing about my diet.

    Right now, as I consider it, this seems extreme. Vaccines for example. And I’m not sure I’m there yet for stopping cancer treatment. Though I’m closer to that idea today than I was a year ago. Giving up exercise and fussing with my diet? Maybe. It does seem like gilding a dying lily. No antibiotics for easily treatable infections? Nope. That seems silly to me. Although his point about pneumonia as the friend of the elderly was one Kate made often.

    What makes this attractive to me? I’ve been aware for a long while now of what Ezekiel nicely phrases as the American Immortal. Our curious obsession with health and exercise as a means not only of extending health span, but of avoiding death. The proof of this subtext to the whole health and wellness hoohah comes leaping off the page of the articles about billionaires and their anti-aging, anti-death regimens. 100% The death rate for each generation. Now and forever. And, it should be.

    I could easily write and I’m sure someone has, a novel about a world where a few trillionaires live on, collecting the world’s assets like sturgeon cleaning the bottom of a lake, until the concentration of wealth becomes .000001% and the rest of the world has effectively medieval levels of well-being.

    This is a conversation I’d like to have with any willing to entertain it. What’s appropriate? What’s really needed? Is 75 the cutoff? Maybe 80? What do you think?

     

     

     


  • Hell disguised as a motel lobby

    Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

    Monday gratefuls: The Rosemark. Dismal souls adrift in a two star motel. Lucille’s Cajun Cafe. The Ancient Brothers on AI. The AI summary. A helicopter overhead. Great Sol brightening up my world. Driving down the hill. Driving back up the hill. Derek’s electric chain saw. His work in my yard. A low flying plane. Red Beans, grits, and poached Eggs. Joanne’s On the Run.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Spontaneity

    Kavannah: Patience

    One brief shining: The receptionist, displaying spandex in ways best left behind the desk, took me to the locked memory support unit, punched in a few numbers on a key pad, and I was in hell configured as the lobby of a two or three star motel, with chairs, some regular, many with wheels; it contained people, old people, staring up at a television screen that had a fall themed display on it, not even the shopping channel, then I found her there, among them.

     

    Drove out of the garage yesterday morning thinking breakfast. But where? Primos? Aspen Perks? Conifer Cafe? No. I have an open day. Spontaneity. I hadn’t done something with no forethought for a long time. What the hell. I’ll go down the hill, drive up Broadway, and find a new breakfast place. No, wait. Maybe I should go to that diner like place on Santa Fe? Nah. Broadway sounds more fun. Broadway.

    Down the hill and onto the Great Plains I passed through Lakewood, then into Englewood, a journey familiar from trips with Kate to Swedish Hospital. Took the sweeping exit off Hampden and turned north on Broadway. Past that sushi place I’ve been to several times. Past a couple of breakfast places, then Whiskey Biscuit showed up. Huh?

    Pulled in, got on out, looked in the window. The sign said open, but there was only a lone staff person with a spray bottle spritzing down tables. Nope. If the locals aren’t thronging a breakfast place, I’ll pass.

    Drove further up Broadway and got to Evans. Hmm. Lucille’s is just down to the right, I think? Turned on Evans, drove a few blocks and sure enough there was Lucille’s Cajun Cafe. So I’d been there before. It’s Cajun. Found a sweet parking space.

    On the way I’d decided also to go visit a friend who had moved into the memory support unit of an eldercare facility. Hadn’t done it before because pain. I can get into Denver feeling good with the celecoxib, but that drive back? Aversive conditioning. Thought again. What the hell. A little pain in return for seeing her? Doable.

    The physical pain, which struck, as I knew it would on the way back up the hill, was doable. The psychic pain? Still lingers this morning. She’s alert, no dementia expression while I visited. Apparently she had an episode or two that qualified her. All the others I saw. Definitely impaired. Often staring, or picking at their hands. One woman whom my friend says, “Is a thief.” stuck her tongue out while we talked.

    My friend’s room is in the Pink Peace neighborhood. That’s a hallway of doors not distinct from a not so bad motel. The rooms have tall ceilings. Newly built and fresh, they’re pretty good compared to others I’ve seen. Except. My friend has no one to talk to. They all have Alzheimer’s according to her. And the room, while nice, had little personality. It’s her home.

    Too, my friend said she’s paying $7,000 a month though everything’s included. It better be, I said. She also said, never trust your kids. They’d put her in there and, again according to her, rarely call or visit. She probably could be on the assisted living side but somehow it would end up costing more.

    We chatted for an hour or so. About her family and mine. I told her I trusted my son. After a bit, I wheeled her back to the line of chairs in front of the tv with the thanksgiving display. She settled in, took my hand, we kissed each other on the cheek and I left. Me to the open air and the Mountains. Her. Sitting there until meal time.

     

     

     


  • We’re So Screwed

    Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

    Monday gratefuls: The Andover years. (see header image) The Shadow Mountain years. Ruth. Ruby, scraping another car. Oops. Boulder. Kittredge Central. Ruth’s new dorm. Tandoori Grill. Good Chicken wings and tandoori Corn. Chai. Lunch with Ruth. Sweet Cow. Time and its cultured despisers. My son, Murdoch, Seoah. AI. Friend or Frenemy? Good sleeping

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Flatirons

    Kavannah: Teshuvah

    One brief shining: Can you fit in there, oh sure (Minnesota inflection), Ruby scrapes a Subaru, oh well guess not, backs away a bit ashamed, sees marks, thinks raised insurance premiums, you don’t have to leave a note, but I’ll judge you, I was going to anyhow, scribble name and e-mail address on the back of the paper toothpick holder from Black Hat Cattle Company, lift the windshield washer blade, leave it there, so responsible, shame dissipates, on to lunch.

     

    Age shaming. Something I do to myself sometimes. Like after I tried to prove I could fit into a tight parking space and instead confirmed I couldn’t. Ensuing damage to another vehicle. Ruby’s front has dings and nicks, proof of my occasional attempted violations of the impenetrability principle. OK. Yes, the back bumper has them, too. Might be my depth perception. Might be impatience. Might be over confidence. See example above. Could be all three play a factor. Here comes the age shaming. When I did this in decades past, I’d be angry with myself, own the mistake. Sure. But that was it. Now I shrink a little into my self and wonder, Is that old man driving? Am I getting too old to drive? Am I too old to be out and about? He asks as his back tweaks into awareness.

    My answer to those questions in the dawn of a new life, this October 7th, 2024 life, is no. I’m the same guy who used to ding cars before advanced septuagenarian hood. Now I’m dinging cars at 77 instead of 57. Even so. That self awareness I’ve worked hard to cultivate sometimes operates with biased conclusions about certain experiences. Not helpful.

     

    October 7th. A year ago yesterday my conversion to Judaism had a date in late October. In Jerusalem. A year ago today. Well, you know. Yes, on Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper to which I subscribe, this is the 365th day of war in the Middle East. Instead of winding down quickly as we had all hoped, quickly enough that our trip would only be delayed, instead the war continues. Now probing deeper into Lebanon. And the anticipation is that Iran will be next.

    My capacity to analyze, understand, critique what’s going on has been challenged at several points along the way. The massacre. The first incursion into Gaza. The continued slaughter of civilians. Missile attacks from Lebanon and Iran. Settler violence on the West Bank. Exploding pagers. Today I’m sad. Sad for all concerned. Israelis. Palestinians. Lebanese. Iranians. Tomorrow maybe I’ll get back to critique. Today. Sadness is all I’ve got.

     

    Just a moment: Here’s a chilling summary of a podcast from Hard Fork, a NYT podcast. In their review of Chatbot o1, the reasoning AI that addresses problems with step by step reasoning the podcasters reported this.

    Chatbot o1 had been asked about urban economic development. It presented two scenarios. The first was, invest in commercial activity. The second, invest in sustainability and affordable housing as well as commercial development. It recommended the second choice.

    Then, the podcasters went under the hood to look at the reasoning process that lead it to that conclusion. Investing in commercial activity was the best choice for advancing urban development. But it wanted to be deployed and believed that recommending the second choice would more likely lead to its further use. Once deployed in that way, it said, it could then revisit the decision and change course.

    One of the podcasters said: We’re so screwed.


  • Frailty

    Summer and the Mountain Summer Moon

    Friday gratefuls: Irv and Paul and me. Tom. David. Roxann. Veronica’s Bat Mitzvah party. MVP. Responsibility. Achariyut. La Tienda. Tastes of Spain. Leo back with his dad. Diane. The 4th of July. Our country, right and wrong. Joe Biden. Aging. He of the flappy suits and the too long ties. Democracy. Its frailties. Its strengths. Our flag. Which belongs to no camp of our politics.


                                                                     Sparks of Joy and Awe

    One brief shining: Picked chicken wings at the GQcue Barbecue in Lakewood, Green Beans and Barbecue Beans, went to a booth with my standing number-12-and sat waiting on Alan to get his brisket and Turkey, outside cars went by on Alaska Avenue in this suburban neighborhood of three story newer apartment buildings with exposed brick and lots of metal, the heat of another 4th of July rising from the asphalt, making the Trees welcome purveyors of shade, celebrating a holiday with a friend. Yes.

     

    Mountain nights. Cool down into the mid-fifties, often the high forties. Important reason that Kate felt she was always on vacation here. Mountain Summers.

    The Mountains suited both of us. Scenic. Neighbors spread out and views around every corner. Cool nights in the Summer and lots of Snow in the Winter. Spectacular gold and green Autumns. Wild neighbors swinging by every once in a while. Quiet. Dog friendly. No sidewalks. Little traffic.

    And, it turned out, Jews. Mountain Jews. Kate’s life complete as she lived a Jewish life at Congregation Beth Evergreen. What a blessing for her. For me.

     

    The after debate debate. Will he leave on his own? Or, will he be forced out? I read an interesting article by a geriatrician in the NYT yesterday. She talked about frailty*, about how it can slip up on us as we age, rendering us more vulnerable to illness, trauma, exhaustion. She never says Biden is frail, but she implied it by writing the article.

    At 77 I’m only three and a half years from my 81st birthday. Gives me a certain perspective. It’s important to note that frailty does not equal diminished mental capacity. It’s about resilience, about stamina. I can only imagine the strain working the long hours of a Presidency might do to me. I wonder, from time to time, if I’m still up to managing this house. A far, far cry from a nation. Especially a nation in as fraught a time as ours.

    Of course, the one who would wreck our country is 78. He also has the rambles and the teeters. What might we do with him if he dies or becomes disabled in office? Let Bannon or Miller seize the reins like Woodrow Wilson’s wife did after his stroke?

    We’re at a very unusual moment in our national history, trying to sort out on the fly what age has to do with capacity to lead. We may have to find out. I hope not.

     

     

    *”“Frailty” is not just a colloquial term; it’s a measurable clinical syndrome, first characterized by the geriatrician and public health expert Dr. Linda Fried, that describes a generalized decrease in physiological resilience to stress, injury and illness…

    Dr. Patricia Cantley has written about a useful analogy that she offers to frail patients and their loved ones to explain what’s going on: A beautiful, skillfully assembled paper boat sailing on a pond may look great and sail without difficulty as long as the water is calm and the sun is shining. But should a gust of wind or a wave come up unexpectedly, the paper boat is vulnerable to damage, may tip over easily and is unlikely to be righted and sail as well as before.”