Category Archives: Aging

Aging, Bees

Bee Diary: April 18, 2001

Leave a comment

Spring                                       Full Bee Hiving Moon

My bee pick up date and time has come.  I get my gals around 2:30 pm on Saturday.  I’m mostly ready, having prepared the hive boxes and the frames on Sunday.  I need a couple of entrance reducers and a bottom board, but that’s no big deal.  I have frozen pollen patties so I’m good there and the honey frames I’ve got in the hive boxes will feed my bees to begin, 06-27-10_beekeeperastronautmaybe enough to get them through to the dandelions.

This is a new season and I’m hopeful that my increasing experience will make it a successful one.  We plan to sell some honey this year, at least enough to cover package bee costs and equipment, perhaps turn a little profit.  That entails finding a bee-proof spot to do the extracting; I’m hoping the garage will work.

Went to see my dermatologist.  No skin cancer.  First time I’ve been checked, but, hey, this skin ain’t gettin’ more pliable.  He says once a year from now on.  Now on until.  Now on until death, I suppose.

Another busy day with Leslie at 11:30, dermatologist and Woollies tonight.  Heading out.

Aging, Art and Culture, Health, Retirement

Adding One More

Leave a comment

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, Family, Woolly Mammoths

A Night I Needed Friends. And They Were There.

Leave a comment

Spring                                                      Waxing Bee Hiving Moon

On the way back from the Red Stag, the Woolly Monday night meeting, the moon hung in the western sky, a thin crescent, a slice, almost too faint to see, a shy moon against a dark blue backdrop.

Warren and Mark were there tonight.  We had a couple of laughs over hearing as we each turned our heads to hear what the other had said.  Aging men, old ears.  We talked about nuclear power, the Republican health and human services budget which Warren covers for the Star-Tribune.  Mark told me he and Elizabeth had learned Tai Chi from a Chinese teacher in Shanghai.  The instructor spoke no English.  We’re going to practice together at the next Woolly meeting.

We spoke a bit about Mark (brother) and his coming to America.  Mark (Woolly) met some of the ex-pat community in Thailand.  He said they’re a bit edgy, a different group than other places.

We each had one of Red Stag’s local food dishes.  I had a Kale gratin that was wonderful with a Limousin hamburger.

This was a night I needed to talk to friends and I’m glad they were there.

So, life will change, again.  As it always does.

Aging, Asia, Dogs, Health

Feeling the Burn

Leave a comment

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, Dogs, Humanities, Politics, Writing

Habitus

Leave a comment

Spring                                                                   New Bee Hiving Moon

The dogs, that is, Sollie and Rigel, still have energy for the fight.  Damn it.  I’ve not yet figured out a foolproof strategy for keeping them away from flashpoints.  I will.

Kate called and she says both Ruth and Gabe have had a change in habitus.  That’s pediatric speak for body change.  Gabe is taller and thinner.

Ruth’s face has begun to elongate, moving from pre-school to school age.  This means, Kate says, that Ruth will hit puberty early.  Uh-oh.  She’s already lost a tooth.  This is stuff that usually happens around 6 and she was still 4, turning 5 on Monday.  Ruth is bright, athletic, blond and blue-eyed.  Can you imagine that combination in junior high?

Meanwhile I have a quiet weekend to devote to the novel and to Latin.  Novel first, then Latin.  Probably a trip to the grocery store and definitely another go at seed starting.  I still have some tricks.

A conference call at 5:00 pm about making a Sierra Club endorsement in a special election, the seat, Senate District 66, vacated by Ellen Anderson when she took a position on the Public Utility Commission.

Aging, Commentary on the news, Family, Weather +Climate

A Jinn Out of the Bottle

Leave a comment

Spring                                                                Waning Bloodroot Moon

Round Lake still has ice, April 1st.  Ice out is way late this year.

Put Kate on the Northstar this morning, headed for MSP, terminal 2, for her Southwest flight to Denver and granddaughter Ruth’s 5th birthday.  Kate gets a real kick out of visiting the grandkids, a sort of grandma thing.  It’s great to see.  Being retired makes all this much easier for her.

Fukushima nuclear disaster appears to grow worse though sorting out the news reports is difficult.  The utility company appears less than forthcoming with data and the Japanese government has been unusually slow, too.  As Bill Schmidt said at Sheepshead, the tsunami and the earthquake have created much greater human tragedy so far.  Over 10,000 dead found and probably and equal number sucked out to sea never to be found.

Those folks need our attention and our care, as do humans experiencing disasters natural or manmade anywhere.

And yet, the media focuses on the nuclear story.   This is a genie that we know, one loosed from its billions of years old bottle, a source of energy confined to the bright heart of stars until the last century.   We say we control it, but like fire, if it gets away from us, its elemental nature can overwhelm our defenses, poison our world.  The record is mostly good, consider all those reactors functioning all these years without an accident, but three, three acknowledged accidents, roils the psyche.  What have we done?  Could such an unusual confluence of events happen here or over there, or over there?

This is a story whose end is not yet written, one whose significance will become clear later, perhaps years, maybe even centuries from now.

Aging, Health, Politics, Retirement

Boomers Crashing on the Beach

Leave a comment

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, Dogs

Go West, Old Man

Leave a comment

Spring                                                        Waning Bloodroot Moon

Tomorrow I take off for Lincoln, Nebraska to pick up our two grand-dogs, Sollie and Gertie.  They will stay with us while Jon and Jen’s house has renovation work done, adding another room, a new roof, much needed closets.  Sollie has been on a hunger strike for the last six months so we’ll see how he responds to a new environment.  He’s begun gaining weight just recently, so I hope the new digs don’t throw him off.  Gertie has a canine temperament much like Rigel and Celt, our first Irish Wolfhound.   That means she’s an adventuress–read, tries to escape all the time, territorial, mischievous and damned cute.  I have a hunch she’ll met Mr. Electric Fence soon after arriving here.

We have plenty of space for them and we have had, at one point, seven dogs, so managing this many is not new for us.  Besides this’ll be just five.

Though I enjoy long drives by myself this will be a marathon.  One day to Lincoln.  Spend the night.  One day back.  This is because I don’t want to handle Gertie and Sollie in a motel.  I don’t want to lose them, after all.  I got a couple of audio books for the journey, so I’ll just settle in for  several hundred miles and listen.

Spent more time today translating Ovid, a bit of time with Wheelock and then got back to work on Missing.

Aging, Humanities, Myth and Story, Retirement, Writing

Ovid and Me

Leave a comment

Spring                                                               Waning Bloodroot Moon

The Latin work has gone past difficult learning, though there is still that, too, into a different, almost ecstatic place.  Reading the words of another language and making sense, poetry, from them still seems magical to me.  I’m really doing it.  The closest analogy is my first set of glasses that corrected my far vision.  All of a sudden I saw individual stars in the sky.  william-turner-ancient-italy-ovid-banishedThe moment was extraordinary.  What had been a fuzzy, blurred night sky became black velvet set with bright points of light.

Now it appears I will finish Diana and Actaeon before the Titian show closes on May 1st and I might make my way through Diana and Callisto, too.  I’m enjoying translating the different stories, so I think I’ll move on to Medea, Pentheus and other discrete stories rather than try the full frontal assault I had planned, start with Book I, verse 1 and soldier through to the last verse of Book XVI.

Another idea that seems possible now is to investigate the Latin texts behind other objects in the museum:  Theseus and the Centaur at the Lapith wedding,  Ganymede and the Eagle,  Lucretia,  Germanicus.  I’m sure there are other objects that have particular Latin texts behind them.  I have no particular reason for doing this except to deepen my knowledge of mythology and of the specific objects in our collection with Latin connections.

Taking up a new intellectual challenge later in life is not only possible, it’s exhilarating.

Aging, Cinema and Television, GeekWorld, Great Work, Memories, Politics, Travel

I Want To Like Nuclear Power

Leave a comment

Spring                                                                                    Waning Bloodroot Moon

Japan.  Nuclear power.  Climate change.  Not a pretty picture.  I don’t know about others, but I want to like nuclear power.  Its non-carbon emitting energy production has a potential role in staving off the worst effects of global warming.  However.  With no place to store the waste permanently, the waste gets stored temporarily near the reactor in which it was used.  This seems safe.  Look at Prairie Island.  After all these years, still no trouble.  Then again.  How many years do we have to have in a row with no trouble?  25,000 or so, I believe.  That’s a long run.

That’s not all.  Situations develop, human error, mechanical failure, maintenance scrimping, natural disasters with unforseen confluences, say an F5 tornado and a once in a century flood.  Could happen over the span of over 25,000 years.  Probably will.  Three Mile Island and Chernobyl had become objects in the rear view mirror, errors, mistakes, but over with.  Until Fukushima.

Now, suddenly, they begin to look links in a chain, a nuclear chain.  Remember Godzilla?  Them?  The 50 Foot Woman?  Radiation.  Now there’s radioactive iodine in the sea.  I want to like nuclear power, but I’m having a hard time.  The stakes of mistakes seem too high.  At least for now.

Wish somebody would get a good fusion reactor goin’.