Category Archives: Aging

Aging, Bees, Faith and Spirituality, Family

Still sinking.

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Beltane                    Full Dyan Moon

Kate can tell when I begin to submerge, move below the surface of day to day contact.  I become short, irritable.  She gets the feeling of walking on egg shells.  By the time this happens I’m not in touch with my effect on the outside world.  Distraction and self-absorption reign.

She brings it up.  We talk.  Today I said, “I’ve moved into melancholy.”  The distance between closed.  We both know this journey and its dark side.  I ate my chirashi and she her teryaki bento box.

“What precipitated it?”

“I have no idea.  Chemicals, I think.”

“No. Wait.  It began, I think on Hilton Head.  Maybe it was the weather.  I now that sounds absurd, but then, I know it happens, too.  Gloomy outside, gloomy inside.”

“I love you.”  Said with the grasp of both the condition and the afflicted.  Therapy in their own right.

Otherwise, the day had bees and money.

Mark Nordeen came over and we popped the top on the second hive.  Lotsa bees.  Took a long while to get the smoker going.  The smoke calms them down.  They stop flying, go back into the hive.

The top hive had brood on several frames and the number of bees has tripled at least.  There were three queen cups and I got to see exactly what they looked like.

“If you ever see a queen cup that has a queen in it, don’t knock it off.  That means they’re about to swarm and you’ll need the second queen for those who stay behind.”

We moved the bottom hive on top because there had not been as much work done down there and we wanted to encourage more frames filled with brood.

Later in the morning we saw our cash-flow adviser.  We’ve done very well and continue to  do so, but as we move to retirement she says there is a big trick to moving from paid employment to retirement income.  In the case of Kate we’ve been lucky to have her producing large quarterly bonuses which have enabled us to do many different things:  dogs, permaculture, long trips.  After retirement, those kinds of bumps in income will disappear and we have to decide how to deal with that.  Turns out cash is the primary tool, having lots of it in liquid investments like CD’s, bonds or money market.

The moral here is that no matter how you feel, life goes on.  Decisions have to be made.  Bees need care.  The garden goes through its season.  There is something reassuring to the constancy and permanence of natural change.

Aging

Mid-Autumn

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Beltane              Waxing Dyan Moon

We’ve had rain all day, a gentle steady rain.  Nice.  Temps have stayed in the high 40’s, it’s 49 right now at 4:18 p.m.

It rained on Penny’s birthday party.  A 70th.  The party makers moved the whole thing inside and all was fine.

Here’s another way to know where you are on life’s great wheel.   What kind of events do you attend?  Is it retirement parties?  7oth birthdays?  50th wedding anniversaries?  Funerals?  Getting more mail from the Social Security Administration than family members?  You’ve reached at least mid-autumn.  That’s where Kate and I are now.

Next year we’ll celebrate Kate’s retirement and I want to do a big party again.  I gotta think it through though.  Not sure just what form it should take.  We had a 50’s sock hop at a Maid-Rite restaurant for her 50th; I planted her the purple garden and we had the breast cancer fund-raiser for her 60th.  Gotta noodle this one.

An inside, cuddle up and read day.

Aging, Art and Culture, Garden

Morning Workout

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Spring                  Waxing Flower Moon

Shifting my workout to the AM.  The whole routine has gotten stale and needs shaking up.  Maybe when it gets a bit warmer I’ll take the aerobics outside.  I used to workokout outside all the time, even in the coldest part of winter, then on snowshoes.  Now I’m on the treadmill.

An Asmat tour today, filling in for Lila Aamodt.  Helping Kate with the garage sale, potting veggie transplants and planting legumes.  That’s the week this week.  Gardening stuff will occupy a lot of time between now and the vacation.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Politics

Why We Need Universal Health Care

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Spring            New Moon (Flower)

A word for the ones in silent despair, hiding behind doors and well-kept lawns, all those in trouble.

A while back I mentioned a neighbor whose life turned upside down over a week-end.  He went from  a productive, active guy to a suicidal victim of a progressive form of multiple sclerosis.  After his diagnosis and subsequent treatment brought little relief he tried to end his life, bringing paramedics and the blue and white Allina ambulance to his door.  He did this  while his wife talked with us about our new orchard.

Now, six months or so later, their bank account is empty.  They are putting necessities on credit cards and the “disabilty insurance” they have is not insurance, but a loan, a loan they have to repay.  Their lawn is neat, the flower beds tended and ready for plants.  The small evergreens they planted when they moved in some years back have grown into mid-size trees.  The American flag flutters from their flag-pole, lit with lights.

He built an observatory a few years back, I may have mentioned this.  It now sits there, a white dome with a go-to Celestron telescope, abandoned by its maker.  His MS is advanced stage 2, of which, when I asked Kate about it, she said, “It’s not good.”

Vulnerable people have had their vulnerability magnified by the economic crisis.  That’s what this has driven home to me.  Imagine being in a situation where a medical condition threatens not only your retirement, but your house, your family.  Now imagine all that in a situation where the economic eats up what little cash you already have.

Their situation is an argument, the argument, for universal health care and a safety net for persons with debilitating illness, a safety adequate to maintain gains they have made over ther course of a working career.  I’m not talking here about pleasure boats, expensive vacations and country club memberships; I’m talking about a house, food, health care and family security.

This cries out for justice.

Aging, Art and Culture, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Politics, Writing

This Is The Question I Face Now. One I Have Not Answered.

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Spring            Waning Seed Moon

Agency.  There’s been a lot written in psychology and history about agency.  We have agency when we can affect the flow of events in our own lives or in the world around us. (No, I’m not going to get into the subtle no-free-will arguments floating around.)  A lot of the historical work has concerned how those without agency–say women, slaves, workers–get it or why they don’t have it.  In the case of the individual agency refers to our capacity to direct our own life.

A sense of agency underwrites our sense of self, or our sense of group identity.  Note that our agency or our group’s agency can be positive or negative.  A more negative sense of agency, that is, sensing that others or factors outside your control influence your life or your group, leads to a feeling of diminished capacity or is a feeling of diminished capacity.  A positive sense of agency promotes a feeling of active and successful engagement with the world, the ability to act in ways congruent with your self-interest or your group’s self-interest.

Here’s where I’m going with this.  In my regression back into the ministry after 8 or so years out I made the move because my writing career had not produced the hoped for results.  I had lost a sense of agency in the work area of my life and moved backwards on my psychological journey to retrieve it.  Going backwards to pick up something left behind is a key element of regression.  Its flaw lies in a return to a previous reality no longer relevant.  The ministy was what I had done, a minister what I had been.  The experience of return to the ministry produced missteps and a low level of energy for the actual work.

Now, about ten  years later,  once again I have reached back into my past, this time even further, to retrieve a sense of agency, the ur-agency, for me, the political.  This is the work with the Sierra Club. (hmmm.  just realized I did the same thing two years back when I studied Paul Tillich.  That was a return to life as a student, a potent form of agency for me.)

What the work with the Sierra Club, the study of Tillich and the ministry have in common is an attempt to regain a positive sense of self through a form of agency already well-established and presumably easily recaptured.  None of these activities in themselves is a bad thing, but that is the lure, the  seductive call of regression.

Back there, if only I could go back in time, and become the captain of the football team again.  Prom queen.  College radio jockey.  The actor I became after college.  My successful years as a bond trader or nurse or carpenter.  Back there I was strong, able.  I had a way with the world, a position of respect and self-confidence. Continue reading This Is The Question I Face Now. One I Have Not Answered. →

Aging, GeekWorld

The Weekend

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Spring               Waning Seed Moon

Another weekend come and gone.  A fellow Woolly, I think, told me that retired folks he knows still view the weekends as special, different from the weekdays.  I sure do.  Weekends have more latitude, more stretch and give, where weekdays still bring for me an expectation of things accomplished, deeds done, seriousness of intent at least entertained.

This one had some of that flavor, some not.

The not came partly in reference to this computer, the older Dell, not the new Gateway.  My disc drives have dropped off the cyber map.  When called upon, they sit there, quiet.  Non-violent resistance.  Nothing.  I’ve tried many, many things to convince them to come home and go back to work, but nothing appeals to them as yet.

If I need to, I’ll shift my images to the Gateway and use it to burn cds and print color images, reserve this one for writing and the laser jet.  I’m not going to give up quite yet, I want to search a few more tech sites, see if I can come up with something.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Health

Two Colorful People Together

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Spring                  Full Seed Moon

Yes, we need no appraisal, we need no appraisal today.  Our bank, Wells Fargo, decided we do not need an appraisal to refinance our loan.  Something about our loan balance, equity and that it would be a roll-over instead of a brand new loan.  OK.  That means we can refinance sometime next week.  A good thing.

The last week and a half, since the root canal, has had dealing with the infected jaw, then one organ after another taking up my mornings.  All important to my long term health, but it has left me tired and with a sense of little accomplished.

This need to accomplish, to achieve continues as a backdrop.  Kate says when she retires she’s ready to rest on her laurels, sit back and reflect on her life.  “We can just be two colorful people together,” she said.  I’m not sure I can give up the hope of something over the horizon, a realization, a book, a political action a defining event for this stage of my life.  If not, I may find the last two decades or so of life a struggle. Or, I suppose, they might be very productive.

Drifting right now.  The melancholy at bay, but not too far away, ready to bring a tear or a heaviness to my now.  Feels empty.

Aging

80%

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Spring        Waxing Seed Moon

Whoa.  I’m 80% back to normal, which feels like double speed ahead compared to the slowed down, body working hard lethargy of the last four days.  To think I did that to myself intentionally.

When an illness or disease process begins to lift, the world becomes clearer and more hospitable, as if a dark mist you didn’t even notice has finally disappeared.

Tomorrow I get my glaucoma survelliance.  At least I’ll be able to stay awake.

Aging, Family, Health

Grandma Told Me So

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Spring            Waxing Seed Moon

Kate is home.  As is our habit, I met her at the Loon Cafe after she took the LRT into downtown.  To park I went in a ramp, promptly scored the first parking spot, which allowed me later to just pull around a concrete pylon, turn left and give my money to the cashier.  Very cool.

The other amazing part was the rat in the maze experience.  Getting out of the ramp I exited onto a skyway, walked until I found Butler Square, went into Butler Square, wound through a few hallways, found the entrance, exited, then turned left and went one block to the Loon Cafe.  The truly amazing part was that after Kate and I had supper I reversed field and followed the path back to the truck without a misstep.

I’m glad to have her back.  This tooth business has been a hassle and I wanted to complain to somebody about it, but she wasn’t here and who else would listen?  I complained for about a minute over supper and that was enough.

Ruth is a prodigy, capable of astounding feats of linguistic and muscular agility.  I know this because Grandma told me so.

Gabe is the cutest, friendliest baby ever.  I know this because Grandma told me so.

Grandma loves being a grandma.  ditto.

Aging, Art and Culture

“It’s a Blessing If You Need It.”

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Spring  Waxing Seed Moon

Uh-oh.  On my way back from the Institute this morning I felt my left cheek.  Swollen.  Beginning to ache.  I have a funny feeling this may not be a pleasant couple of days.  I called Jeff Erickson, the root canaler.  His office has closed for the weekend.  Not to worry.  He gave me his cell.  Hmmm.  Had to leave a message.  He’ll call back, I’m sure, but hasn’t yet.

Tours this morning were good.  Very different.  The first, from excell academy in Brooklyn Park, had all 4th grade boys, some African and some African-American.

He just called back.  The anti-biotics I have will be enough to see if this goes down.  The pressure has begun to build.  He said if I still had trouble early next week he might go in and lance it.  I said, “That crossed my mind.  Unpleasantly.”  “Oh, no,” he said, “it’s a blessing if you need it.”   I’ll take his word for it.

Koran and Mohammed were two of the boys.  These were inquisitive, interested kids who’d never been to a museum before.  They wanted to look at everything.  They asked me we had anything by Leonardo Da Vinci.  No.  How about the Blue Boy?  No.  How about Georgia O’Keefe?  Yes.  We made a game out of figuring out which was O’Keefe’s painting.

It’s a cityscape at night, very different from what the boys had seen.  They loved the African masks.  One boy had been to Cameroon and seen his father dance a mask that we had.  They also asked to see illuminated manuscripts.  4th graders.  So we went into the Islamic gallery.  We ended with Chinese calligraphy.  A big hit.  They’d studied Chinese calligraphy and some of their work was in the school hall back at the academy.

Second tour, an Asmat tour, was a couple from Coon Rapids with their 9 or 10 year old daughter.  She had just had a birthday and asked to come to the MIA.  She showed her parents the Chihully in the lobby.  “We studied him in the first grade,” she said.  “Yeah,” her mother said, “she’s culturing us.”

We had a good tour of the Asmat show.  They asked questions, interacted and learned.  It was a fun, intimate family experience.