Well, I’M not, but my post Life’s Third Act is being published as an OpEd piece in the 09/19 in our regional newspaper, The Republican (not associated with the political party).
Good News: I’m in the News!
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Boobs Alive at the Emmys
I’ve never seen so many boobs almost flowing out of the low bodices in the audience at the Emmys. When the women clapped, their boobs shook like Jello, threatening to overflow their moorings. I don’t know why they think it’s attractive. Oh, I know. It’s the men.
Actually, the most attractive gowns ignored the boobs and covered them with exquisitely designed gowns that flattered the figures of the wearers. Here are three of them.
Enough about boobs.
I don’t usually watch the Emmys, but I was looking for good stuff to watch on tv. I never thought to watch Baby Reindeer (Netflix), but it got several awards, so that’s now on my list.
While I’m not one for big productions, I might go ahead and watch Shogun, since it got the most awards last night.
Hacks (Max) is another one I never watched that got several awards, including one for Jean Smart, whom I like, anyway. I’m always looking for older female leads. Hacks is in its third season, so I have some catching up to do.
Which brings me to a new series starting soon featuring Kathy Bates as Matlock. It airs next week on CBS and Paramount. That’s a go to for me. Bates has lost weight and looks as though she has had some work done of her face. But that’s the price some older women will pay to be chosen to work at their craft.
Another quirky series that I loved last season that is coming back, also on CBS and Paramount, is Elsbeth. I’m not sure when season 2 airs, but if you missed the first season, now’s the time to do it.
Yes, I watch a lot of tv at night. The only daytime show I watch is Ari Melber on MSNBC, although I also try to catch Rachel when she’s on.
The Face of Pain
My mother had passed away at age 94, after a decade of increasing dementia.
While Words Fail
She was gone before she went,
slipping into that final forgetting
with each hollow breath.
I was her angel, she said
as she sat at the sunny table
picking at pancakes and coffee
while she still could smile
and think meaning.
Music kept her eyes alive
awhile, her feet remembering
thoughtless, but certain of rhythms
too deliberate to disappear.
She followed my familiar lead,
reaching for memories lost
with the fading of voice.
She didn’t believe in demons,
but I saw them slip inside her skin,
forcing pain from her pores,
folding her face in caverns
of anguish and alarm,
as, steadily, words fled, leaving
a frightened keening in their wake.
She was gone before she went,
and when she went, the world
filled again with words.
(elf 2020)
My Meandering Mind on a Sleepy September Saturday
250 SHADES OF BLUE, and I have most of them hanging on my closet! I have three pair of “navy” jeans and a pair of “navy” pants; each one is a different color blue. And forget about having any of them match up with any of my “navy” tops. (Note: First World Problem)
I DON’T HAVE A BUCKET LIST; there is only one thing I want to do (again) before I die. I want to go to a ballroom dance with a partner and dance the afternoon away. Why “afternoon”? you ask? Because the dance is at a senior center at 2 p.m.
So, here’s my plan, since I don’t have a partner (and assuming that the shot I will get in my back on Tuesday at the Pain Management Center will solve that limitation):
Sometime in the beginning of October, I will contact Sara at EdanSe Company and Ballroom and ask if she might know of an intermediate male dancer who is free on the afternoon of October 21 and would like to earn $50 for two hours of dancing with me. At first, that seems like a lot of money, but it’s worth it to me.
I quit ballroom dancing several years ago because my knee was giving out. And I stopped driving at night. Since then, I got my knee replaced, and if my back gets treated, I’ll be good to go (in the daytime). Sara should remember me because I wrote and shared a poem about her young twin instructors.
LUNCH WITH BETTY, whom I haven’t seen in more than a year, was yesterday, at her Senior Center. It was my first ever Center lunch, and I have little desire to return.
Betty was part of my pre-Covid writing group, and she was one of the best writers in it. Today, she is a tiny, frail looking woman with silver hair and carefully applied makeup. At age 95, she is now part of another weekly writing group, and she recently just stopped taking weekly ballroom dances. (For which she paid her teacher, privately, more than I could ever afford.)
Betty holds court at a lunch table comprised of three men and one other woman. They are like her entourage, and she she regales them with her writings, delivered in a volume that her (hearing impaired) fans can accept. She, herself, she tells me later, has one cochlear implant and one hearing aid. She also has congestive heart failure and upper back pain for which she carries around a microwavable heating pad.
After lunch, she invites me to her home, and I follow her stick-shift Mini Cooper to an older, lovely, well-kept upper middle class home in a lovely upper middle class neighborhood. She lives alone. I aske her what she usually does all day after early lunch at the Senior Center. Usually, she says, she sits with her heated pad behind her back and watches Asian movies on Netflix (because they are all romantic and they end happily). I finally leave because Betty has an appointment at CVS for her flu and COVID shots. She goes to bed around 9 p.m.
Betty has the advantage of being financially comfortable. But she also daily faces the pains and discomforts and challenges of being 95 years old. I think that she personifies what Betty Boop would be like at 95.
THE DANCE OF SEPTEMBER SUNFLOWERS
Geographically, Size Matters
I think folks forget (or never realized) that just about all of Europe will fit within the boundaries of mainland U.S. While there is population diversity in European countries, it is nowhere near the complexities with which we struggle in America because of our size and because we are mostly a nation of immigrants.
For example, Poland is about the size of New Mexico. France is somewhat smaller than Texas. Germany is a little smaller than Montana. Both Portugal and Austria are about the size of Maine.
I wonder how many folks realize that, while Russia is larger than the US in land mass, its population is about half of what we have here in America. Smaller, less diverse, and/or less-populated countries (theoretically) are easier to govern. In terms of politics, geographical size matters. We used to call America a “melting pot”, but it is more like a “vegetable soup”. PBS needs to bring back it’s children’s program Vegetable Soup.
The purpose of the program was to be a television series for children to help counter the negative, destructive effects of racial prejudice and racial isolation and to reinforce and dramatize the positive, life-enhancing value of human diversity in entertaining and affective presentations that children could understand and relate to. Vegetable Soup used an interdisciplinary approach to entertain and educate elementary age children in the value of human diversity.
The show combined music, animation, puppetry and live action film, on the subject of economic, racial and ethnic diversity
Back to size, there is even less awareness, I’ll bet, of the size of Israel. It is about the size of Vermont. And Gaza is about the size of Philadelphia.
I recently posted my own solution to the Israeli war, and oddly enough, Kamala Harris’ comes close. I urge her to take it further.
Leaping into Elderhood
The only podcast to which I listen is “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” on NPR. It makes me laugh, and I always learn some little known, but intriguing facts.
For example, I just learned that a recent study shows that we do not age slowly; rather we age in leaps. The first leap is at age 44; the second at 60. They need to add one more leap and that’s at 80.
When I reached 80, my knees went and I had to have one replaced. The other is still iffy. Then my hips and back started aching and now I have an appointment at the pain management office because my lumbar spine is in constant pain. Of course, the “where the hell did I put my phone” syndrome is right on target as well.
Theoretically, the next leap would be at 100. If I last that long, it will be very short leap to “can someone please adjust my pillows?” and “Please up the morphine.”
How my garden doesn’t grow.
When I moved here, one of the first things I started to do was to plant tomatoes and flowers. That got me through COVID. Then my knees started going and I wound up getting my right knee replaced last year. Now it’s my back that is bothering me, and this past summer was too humid to be outside gardening anyway. So, this is what I’m left with — a shelf by a window.
I have always had house plants, and I just repotted the ones that were getting out of control. The vines on the left are the offspring of a plant I got some 40 years ago from very good friends with whom I am still in touch. The orchid was a spontaneous gift from my daughter a few weeks ago.
While not really an altar as such, I did add my two favorite icons/archetypes: St. Anthony and Hecate. St. Anthony belonged to my mother, and it is one of the few things of hers I rescued. Hecate is made of wool fibers by an artist I found on Etsy. She is wearing a Hecate necklace that I made but have no where to wear.
I guess I look at these archetypes as representing my animas and anima, although this male represents sweetness and caring and light, while the female is powerful in her darkness.
My space is too small for any more plants, but I’m happy with the ones I have, and they seem happy with me.
A suggestion for a solution
Over on her WOW blog, Pat Taub posts a strong piece about “When Genocide Becomes Normalized.” She asks for comments. The following was my comment:
I don’t think think that most people realize that Israel is about the size of Massachusetts and Palestine is about the size of Philadelphia. So, here’s my solution if we in America really want to stop the carnage. Israel is a sovereign nation ruled by its elected government, so if it is conducting genocide, which it is, it should be left to it’s own resources to do any fighting it continues to do. We should not be sending the Israely government military aid of any kind — soldiers or weaponry. To appease the supporters of Israel, we say that we are not stopping their government, but neither are we helping them. This is their choice to wage their war the way their leader decided. There is a big disconnect between the Israely government and the Israely people. We support all Israely people.
Instead, what we should do is send our best troops into Gaza to route out Hamas, with instructions to ensure that their tactics protect civilians at all costs and help them escape from the war zone. That’s where our financial support should go. And we should also work with — and provide resources to — all countries along Gaza’s borders to help them build livable camps for the refugees and provide them with food and water. No money to Israel. Our support should go to root out Hamas and, finally, help the Palestinians take back their own country from Israel.
Now, as far as Kamala is concerned. Before she can do anything positive, she has to get elected. That’s politics, and politics requires compromise. I don’t like her sending resources to Israel and I don’t like her approving the continuation of fracking. What she does with those issues after she is elected remains to be seen. In the meanwhile, she has my vote, for sure.
Life’s Third Act
Jane Fonda, who is exactly my age, has given any number of talks about life’s “third act”, which, as in theatre, is the last act of a production. Billionaires like Fonda have the financial resources to live in a comfortable environment, meet their health requirements, and hire whomever they want to take care of whatever other physical needs they have. But most of today’s elders are trying to figure out how to play out their last acts in more than just survival mode.
Even Fonda is confronting the problem of feeling isolated and extraneous as the major activities that gave her previous two acts meaning, purpose, and community slowly disappear. Still in relatively good health, Fonda has taken to being an activist for various issues that are important to her as a way of continuing to feel useful and connected. Good for her.
But what about the rest of those middle class retired seniors who struggle with feeling isolated and purposeless because of health issues, lack of financial resources, and inadequate living conditions.
Under these circumstances, what are their choices for how they perform in this last act of their lives? How we elders live depends and awful lot on where we live, and our choices are limited.
I am fortunate that I live in my own rooms in my daughter’s house. We are three generations in this house: my daughter and son-in-law, my grandson, and me. I contribute financially each month to offset the my share of the costs of utilities, phone, cable and streaming television, and food etc. I’m responsible for my breakfast and lunch food, and my daughter cooks dinners for all of us. Luckily for me, my daughter is a born caregiver and my son-in-law is an easy-going guy. He even does the dishes. I am one of the fortunate ones.
A recent post on theseniorlog.com links to an article on the growing trend of intergenerational living. At its best, intergenerational living
brings together people of all ages in an environment that encourages interaction, socialization and activities that are beneficial for all.
But many families, for various reasons, can’t pull this off. As reported in the Jesuit Review
Many of us in the current generation of senior citizens also must cope with our family members’ living far away. According to a study from 2019, about one-quarter of Americans live more than 30 miles from their nearest parent or adult child, but that share is higher for college-educated individuals, who often move away from their hometowns to pursue their careers. Migration has always existed to some extent, but until recently, when families migrated, they often included adult children, grandparents, cousins, nieces or nephews. The current ease of transportation and communications has actually resulted in limited, non-physical connections for a significant portion of society.
It has also destroyed much of family life. Family elders may end up removed from close contact or routine communication with younger members of their clan.
So, what are the other housing options for playing out your last act? You can either “age in place” or pay enormous fees to live in an assisted living facility — both of which come with their own major problems.
Assisted living monthly fees run from $3000 a month to over $10,000 a month, depending on the level of services you will get. One place I found online — an innovative and progressive living situation for elders that offers individual cottages and apartments in a community-based setting — does not even bother providing information about cost on their website.
Aging in place is also not as good an answer as you might think, either. According to a an article on Housewire ,
Aging in place is seen as a leading “social barrier“ to healthy aging in America in 2024, according to a new survey conducted by Alignment Health. The survey was first reported by McKnights Senior Living.
“As more seniors choose to live independently and longer in their own homes, aging in place brings its own set of challenges: nearly seven out of 10 consider aging in place a top social barrier to their health and well-being,” the organization said of its survey findings.
I don’t know if the new administration is prepared to tackle the issues that are preventing most elders from having a successful Last Act. Maybe we all need to band together somehow (like the supporters of reproductive rights) and organize some sort of protest. How about our rights to live before we die? I wonder if Jane Fonda might be interested in taking the lead.
My son Bix tells me that blogs are back. This blog never really went away; I just did.
The odd combination depression and the peculiarities of my personality negated any effort at creativity. I just wanted to sleep; nothing caught my fancy. But ending my brief (1 1/2 years) relationship and getting on more effective meds did the trick. (I think that he ultimately hoped for companionship, while I hoped only for a final romantic adventure. We were both disappointed).
But now blogging is back, my son says. And because mine has never gone away, many of my posts still get read when somebody googles a topic about which I posted. For example, my son recently posted this:
Tfw you’re googling for what was in the Greedy Bastard at Mad Dog in the Fog and on the first page of results is a blog post by my mom referencing one of my own where I talk about heading down to an antiwar protest that I have no memory of attending.
That referenced post of mine was from October 2002. Yup. Once something can be caught by google, it’s there for eternity. It’s one way of getting a feeling of leaving some kind of legacy, I guess.
It’s almost October, and if I look back in this blog, I find that October is when I come to life creatively. I am looking back on my life in general quite a bit these days — finally recognizing the times that I was my own worst enemy.
There is much to write about these days. I wish it were 20 years ago and I could be back with those folks in the old blogging community and get into those ongoing conversations we would have about life, the universe, and everything.
But that’s OK. I’ll just continue here anyway, because when I talk to myself, I tell the truth.