Simple things, breakfast, Christmas gifts

Christmas season is here  and this is not a Christmas photo -- but it's a frequent breakfast time photo. I've long since decided to forgo the  added sugar and preservatives in juices and take my fruit plain. I'm not in a rush, can peel oranges or nectarines or whichever exotic variety of fruit I've chosen.

Simplify -- I don't consider canned or frozen orange juice simplifying. I consider it a typical way we complicate our lives.  A commercial way that involves factories, additives, plastics/ disposable containers. The fruit comes in a natural container that is biodegradable.

Our family is simplifying Christmas. The idea was tried last year and we were all happy about it. Although there are four children and they will receive toys that I consider dreadful but that they will be excited about ... for a week or a month, there are seven adults who do not crave electronic anythings. We have the electronics that we need or want and get along just fine, thank you very much.  We will once again gift each other a book -- a book we may or may not have read but one which we think the giftee will enjoy. The book does not have to be purchased new, it can be passed on. It may be prose, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, fat or thin but the giver will think it is a book the giftee will enjoy. So we'll all have a half dozen new-to-us books to read after Christmas gifts are unwrapped.  The idea was a success last year.  The most outstanding success was a dark horse of a book.
My oldest grandson gave me The Boys In the Boat by Dennis James Brown, a book about the sculling team from a small California college that eventually won the US collegiate championship in 1935 and then was able to go the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936. They had to work hard to find financial support, they trained hard. They discovered that they were give the least likely position from which to win the race. That year the Olympics were to be Hitler's great sporting success except two American competitors bested favored Germany athletes: one was Owens who ran the first one-minute mile. And the other was the scullers who, against all odds managed to win their race. The book was so  well paced, so well written that I, who has never been to a regatta, could ride in that scull with the young men, feeling what each of them felt and holding my breath as I read. 

I passed the book on, by summer all of us had read the book. Other books were passed around although some were of more specific interest to their recipient and not to others. I have been thinking about which books to give to whom for a couple of months and now have only to wrap them up. Wondering what books will come my way is as good as waiting for Santa Claus. Not that I have a need for more books. I just finished the 77th book of the year last night, I have two others partly read and started a new one -- I generally have at least two going at a time, and sometimes more. 

Timely Poem by my friend Arlene Corwin

The times are fraught; too much of my reading and listening time -- indeed too much of my brain time -- is spent with news about the impeachement proceedings in Washington. And whenever I turn pages in the NYTimes or read The New Yorker or other magazines I discover other ways in which the world is badly awry. I believe there were four shootings in the past ten days and that's only in America.

Several years ago I began a correspondence with Arlene Corwin, poet-proflict with 13 books in print and her own very specific style which I think springs in large part from the fact that she has been a professional jazz pianist (and sometimes singer) since the age of 16. And she is now a wee bit older than I am, has been living in Sweden for quite some time and sends me her new poems, often hot off the laptop several times a week. She's just had a bad couple of months when her body seemed to announce it was giving up, but Arlene has also been a practitioner and teacher of yoga for most of her life and her mind/body said NO,  IT'S NOT TIME TO GO. She is recouperating and back to writing poems, which have mostly take a somewhat move serious look at the world and life in general. I am especially in agreement with today's poem and have warned her I will quote it here. She doesn't mind at all.

   Mysteries That Never Cease

There are mysteries that never cease,

Will always be:

Because of, not in spite of.

Look at progress:

Despite progress, we are more at risk than ever.

I fear, not ‘in spite of’, but ‘because of’, progress never

What it seems,

All the reams of information,

New advances, dancing in our eyes and ears

Dependent on who sees or hears,

Every positive a dormant negative

Dependent on whose hands it’s in.

Then the secrets of infinity:

What, where, how, why, when; 

A mystery most definitely.

And music, art 

The part that improvises and creates

Out of a place inscrutable,

Wondrous, wonderful.

To never understand?

Dependent on whose hand it’s in, 

Whose talent, aptitude, inborn mind

Is interested at all to find

The answers.

Mysteries That Never Cease 11.21.2019

Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin 

The little gang

Four great-grandchildren on an autumn day posing for their Mom who likes taking photos and does a very fine job of it. The girl who seems to have decided not to wear a jacket is Stella, now in first grade, the tallest boy, with the reddist hair is the eldest (if someone who's 9 going on 10 can be called "eldest" at all) is Phineus  (Phin/Finn), who is in the 3rd grade.  In the red plaid coat is second son, Cole, and down front, littlest but not at all willing to be least is Silas who has started pre-school this year.

The golden trees in the background were lovely for a while but we've had very serious wind and rain and even a dusting of snow since the photo was taken. So autumn is turning toward winter.  (And Stella will have to put on a coat).

November already!! Working on Reflections

Middle of  November already -- hard to believe! With a half dozen wonderful women I'm deep into editing the next issue of Reflections which will be the 20th issue--a special landmark. This one has more content (and it seems to me a higher caliber) than the previous ones.  I am not a believer in the all-American motto that "Bigger is better" but in this case I think it's true. It's also more work and I'm grateful to have the  "comma crew" go over every submissions.

Indeed, we're add a great many commas, also hyphens and corrected much grammar. One committee member, Cathy holds her cell phone ready to check many spellings and facts on Google. It sounds awfully nerdy, but I really have enjoyed the sessions for the past six weeks. One more meeting on the editing and then a subcommittee will work another three or four weeks and lay out the anthology. I enjoy the discussions and decision making about what can follow what, where we need to add in a lighter poem, what photos works where.  Perhaps I missed a career that would have been satisfying, not getting into publishing. But then most people miss many possible accomplishments. I'm happy with this bit of work at this stage in my life --- and especially so because I'm not alone, I have compatible and trustworthy and admirable help.  How often can people in business say that? 

Sign and photo

Many months ago I noticed this sign on  two-lane street that is a connection to downtown Hyannis and popular Rte 6A which runs along the north side of Cape Cod. It comes shortly before a railroad crossing where only one train a day crosses. I told Rachel about it and we've thought of taking a photo but it's never happened until today when we also had Rachel's friend Paloma with us as we were all going for a walk at an Audubon reserve. I visualized a photo of a couple of old people bent over canes, their backs to the sign. But that was not the idea the others had so here we are ... I'm the "Old person"  being guided by Rachel. The sign is the focus which IS what I visualized. I drive that way frequently but I have yet to see a person, young or old, actually walking along that stretch of the street.

Our walk through woods and down to the harbor was fairly long but perfectly wonderful on a sunny, slightly cool autumn day with many fallen leaves beneath our feet.  We passed an enclosure with about ten goats, the sign identified them as "working goats". They are apparently taken to weedy areas where they are allowed to eat all the weeds and such (even poison ivy, I'm told). They are an ecological preference to the use weed killer in places like the right-of-way beneath power lines. They're attractive animals to watch  ... unfortunately they have in inevitable goaty perfume.

Meeting a far-flung friend

A meeting of friends, acquainted via the internet, on a site called Swap-bot where people from all over the world take part in "swaps" of many sorts, from various crafts, to letters, to email questionnaires, etc. Jan, on the left is another Cape Codder but I met her on Swap-bot before I moved here. I'm in the middle and Donna is on the right. Donna and her "guy", Charlie, did a leaf peeping trip through spectacular upstate NY and New England and swung down to  Cape Cod specically to meet Jan and me.  Jan's husband, Paul, and Charlie are not in the photo. I find it interesting that we all chose black and B&W clothes. And I can tell you that, noting that I am about 15 years older than they are, nevertheless, I'm headed to a salon this coming week for a short hair cut and a (possibly hopeless) search for looking a little bit younger. 

As Donna observed a few times, it's remarkable how much we already knew about each other because one segment of Swap-bot is sort of chat room for women over 50 and we have all posted about personal events and backgrounds (Donna and Jan both did count-downs to their retirements). We had a good dinner and an even better talk that went past the closing hour of the restaurant. The internet has brought us together in a happy way -- a wonderful friendship for Jan and I and a very memorable vacation for Donna and Charlie ... plus the absolutely necessary experience for Donna and Charlies of learning how to eat a Maine lobster.

A delicious autumn

It's been a delicious past few weeks. We had a warm and sunny September. Rachel brought me tomatos from a farm where she gets fresh veggies and also from her own tomato plants.  Plus I have a new neighbor (since spring) who says he has ADHD and must stay busy.  He's tending many flowers around his patio and planted several tomatoes.  At six some mornings he could be seen watering my solo hanging flower (name was never discovered), which grew abundantly with his attention. He has been giving me tomatoes too and today it was four little green ones.  I hope they'll ripen because I'm not of the southern type who liked Fried Green Tomatoes.

It's been too many years to count since I've had tomatoes that are actually flavorful and sweet. These have been, a memory from what seems a very  long time ago, actually at least 20 years.  I've also had, from the normal grocery store, very good Italian black plums -- actually ripe and sweet -- and lately some very flavorful pears. Tasteless tomatoes were so blah I have not been buying them for a couple of years.  And I positively will not buy rock-hard little peaches of plums or apricots.  I think there are people who actually do not know what a truly field-ripe tomato -- or strawberry for that  matter -- actually tastes like. 

Apparently many city born and bred young people don't actually know where milk or eggs come from. -- cartons!! And they have no idea what really fresh fruit tastes like.  I know and I've enjoyed it enormously the last few weeks.

First hints of autumn

We've just had a one of the most beautiful Septembers I can imagine. Sunny skies, occasional over night showers, a few foggy mornings (but they were lovely!) mostly in the 60s and 70s -- what more could anyone want? Now it is the last day of September and the air has had a nip, a morning asking for a light sweater.  That's exactly as it should be.

Granddaughter Cori just sent a photo of Stella sporting one of the first partially colored maple leaves of the season. A great-grandmother has every right to say, what could be more charming? 

I love the "sweater weather". This is what the head of the Chamber of Commerce, in an interview on the radio yesterday called "the shoulder season." And that I call the season of the leaf-peeper buses trundling through town. A last opportunity for local businesses to make more sales, a chance for visitors to enjoy our beautiful blue skies, our seashores, the Cape Coddy trinkets in the stores and the seafood in the restaurants.  The irksome hordes of tourist autos, slowing traffic, making left turns difficult and parking spaces scarce, are mostly gone. The school buses are slowing early morning and mid-afternoon traffic -- and that's exactly as it should be. Over and over I hear people saying, "This is my favorite season" Yes, I
think it's mine too.

Concidences galore.

Our little writing group which calls itself LOL (could be, of course, laughing out loud, could be ladies of literature, laughing old ladies) -- etc. met today. We usually talk more than we read our writing. Today very much in spades. The suggested prompt was "teen memories". One was the concidental meetings that lead to a marriage (one very shy girl, meets one very straight forward young man -- and they've been together for over 60 years!), another was an introduction to great theatre (a preview performance of Mary Martin  as Peter Pan). But the coincidences that caused the most discussion was that a guest grew up in Johannesburg, So. Africa, and one of our regular members did too... and they were close enough in age to know many of the same people. So many stories!!

Writing groups, especially those largely made up of women of retirement age, often bring to light revelations that have been buried for many, many years. I've found this in the classes I've taught at the Academy for Lifelong Learning. A time comes when we realize that those stories of pathological shyness can be told, those stories of long correspondences with young men who were recruited and sent overseas to wars that seem ancient, stories of brothers and sisters, loving parents and difficult parents... that seem to have sunk deep into the murk of memory's bottom layers, come back, now, through the wisdom of a long life, they have taken on truths that were not possible sooner. 

Writing, not for publication, not out of ambition, but for the sake of revelation and self-discovery, which remains possible even to people in their sixties and seventies ... yes, their eighties too --is cathartic, healing and deeply satisfying for both writer and audience. To allow that to happen is a large part of why I continue teaching these "telling stories" classes -- with all the ambivalence of that term -- true stories or untrue stories.

Change in Temperature

We had our taste of climate change last week -- 8 or 10 days of high 80s and high humidity made everyone fussy and very uncomfortable. Like this little quilt showing the heat of the sun--its overwhelming dominance in the sky, I was miserable with sweaty skin. I slept at night with only a sheet which was simply there to maintain some habit of modesty. Our usual afternoon sea breeze sometimes blew in some comfort, but not enough. I thought of the many thousands elsewhere who were  enduring heat in the 100s and felt grateful it was not that here. 

I'm doubly aware of how lucky we were to endure only a few days of the discomfort.  For the past couple of days the temperature has dropped into the 70s and yesterday I was happy to sit in the backyard at Rachel's house wearing  jeans jacket and long pants.  I go to bed and am happy to pull the sheet and quilt up and find them as comforting as usual.  Summer is a magnificent season ... when it is the reasonable summers we're used to. Probably future summers will be even less comfortable for even longer times.  We are living in a greatly changing world. Today's issue of National Geographic that I  glanced at when I was having dinner is largely about the melting of the ice in the arctic and the disintegration of the tundra. Massive changes worldwide. Plus a really horrifying set of photos about the plastic stuff that washed up on the ocean beaches.

I am grateful to be a little cool, to get ready to settle down for my evening's reading wearing a robe and possibly with a throw over my legs and feet to keep me comfy.

W

KELP, forget kale

At a large gathering of a current events discussion group called WHAT on Friday one of the men talked about work being done by WHOI (Woods Hole Oceanic Institute) -- one of the world's leaders in oceanic studies. He quoted a scientist who believes kelp (sea weed to most of us) can be farmed in almost all ocean areas. It can feed millions (even if, like me, they have to get accustomed to the taste) (and I admit I'm not yet a fan of kale but maybe I can forget about it).
However, kelp is not merely a food -- for humans, fishes and probably animals -- but it is an emitter of oxygen to replace that which is being lost in the atmosphere. I Googled it just now and find that is is being farmed several places and processed for consumption. I know it has been part of the diets of Japanese people for a long time.

What good news that is, if it catches on around the world! The Sunday paper is full of bad news so some good news is much appreciated. I had previously read that climate change could be reversed if we would plant 2 billion trees. Well, good luck with that! However an encouraging note in yesterday's paper said that either Eritrea or Ethiopia (neighbors, once a single country) planted 2 Million (a long way from Trillion) trees in the past month.

Meanwhile young white men are taking up guns and going to public places and shooting randomly at innocent people, including children. I cannot imagine what is going in their minds. I can understand anger at someone or some institution but I cannot imagine taking a lethal weapon and pointing it at strangers in a public place and shooting.  But who doesn't remember being a child, making a  pistol of your hand (thumb up, index pointing) and saying "bang, bang, you're dead'? in play ... and sometimes in anger and sometime in jokey way. But ... So I read many things and grasp at little threads of hope, like kelp and trees,getting rid of mini plastic bottles of shampoo.  I would also hope they'd add the "nips" --  mini bottles of alcoholic beverages. Those little bottles are the most prevalent litter in local parking lots and roadsides.

Where is this?

Do you know what city this is? I came upon this photo of a city with amazing architecture and had no idea where it was. I think I'm well traveled, I've been to many of the world's great cities but this is stunning!  It is Doha, Qatar which on the Arabian Peninsula. A part of the world I haven't visited. The closest I've been is Cairo. In fact, I admit, shamefacedly, that I only recently discovered there's an African country called Djibouti. We Americans think we are sophisticated about the world. I mean to say, I am proud of all the places I've been.

Well of course I know many Americans know very little about geography -- my daughters both admit to having very little knowledge ... apparently they didn't even learn USA geography in school although I remember homework over a Christmas break in the fourth grade when I was to use my school book, a pencil and box of crayons and draw a map of the United States on a large sheet of paper, put in all the states and their capitals. From the exercise (I was a very conscientious student) I can still close my eyes and see a map of the US. (I admit to having forgotten a few state capitals).

I belong to a weekly current events discussion group made up of contemporaries many of whom have far better educations than I. I'm relatively sure none of them would recognize this picture of Doha and I suspect many don't know where it is ... and maybe have also not heard of Djibouti. We are well read, most listen to a great many TV news programs, we discuss American current affairs with relatively little reference to other countries. We have all chosen to know about what piques  our interest at any particular time. We bemoan the ideas and politics of that vast Middle America that some of us grew up in or lived in for a period of time.  The truth is we all know so little about our own country and a minuscule amount about the rest of the world.

Of course, we have private lives to live and finally that is what brings us happiness or unhappiness ... our hubris -- my own first of all -- is a concern to me. I am very aware of my ignorance.

Summer Time

No, this is not me today although I'm sure the beaches are crowded. It's the middle of the afternoon and 85 degrees out there and, although it IS Sunday and I have been working on the Times Crossword puzzle, I am too fond of my skin to subject it to the hottest part of the day.  Often I walk on the beach early -- 7:30 or so when very few others are out. Today I think I will wait until about 7:30 in the evening and take a walk on the beach.

We wait a long time for summer to really get here and only the past two weeks have really been summer. Yoga on the beach Wednesday night -- timed to end just as the sun is setting -- is a treat, albeit one that my body protests against. I have to admit that having pass the "Big 8-0" I cannot do the things I could do twenty years -- or even ten years -- ago. 

I am very happy to live near a wonderful beach (actually near several but there are only two I frequent). And even at 85 degrees and somewhat too humid, I still love summer best -- the freedom of going barefoot, the pleasure of sleeping with windows open and waking about 5:00 to listen to the birds beginning their days -- especially the imperious crows that announce their locations with a triple "caw". Then I drift back to sleep until the clock radio plays some classical (usually baroque) music with which to start the day. Who knew? I often think that -- who knew, who could have guessed that, at this age, I would find so much simple pleasure on a summer Sunday ...   except the puzzles get harder and harder because they have so many clues about TV series and various stars that I know nothing about. I've let that part of the world spin on it's crazed way without paying attention to it. And that's  just totally okay!

Pavarotti, the Docmenary by Ron Howard

The Ron Howard documentary about Luciano  Pavarotti is playing a the Cape Cinema in Dennis. I went yesterday afternoon and was surprised that there was a sizable crowd on a decent (but changeable) Sunday afternoon.  Of course the crowd was mostly senior citizens -- the younger ones were the likely beach crowd. 

The documentary seemed long, it covered all of his life from boyhood in a small Italian town just post-war with a father who was a tenor in the local church choir, to his enormous success which blossomed most when he was led, by managers, mostly away from the opera stage to the public stage -- the tremendously successful "Three Tenors" period and then huge rock-star-type appearances, and collaboration with Bono, attendance at the events in England by Princess Diana. He was charismatic, he was a major "diva" if the word can be applied to a tenor (and it seems appropriate). He was good-hearted and seemed to always be at ease although he said he was terrifie before every performance.

In fact, I saw him in some Met simulcasts and felt he really couldn't act his way out of a paper bag but he had the 9 high Cs for Daughter of the Regiment and they seemed effortless. I never liked his voice as much as I did Placido Domingo's but that's a matter of personal taste. He was not as handsome as the other tenors either which really didn't matter. The exciting scene in the movie, for me, was the closing aria of the first Three Tenors concert when one felt an enormous sense of delight among the three great men (Jose Carraras not as well known as the others but with a wonderful voice having survived a cancer that took him away from the stage for a few years). When the three blended their powerful voices on the "vincera" syllables at the end of the  "nesum dorma" aria from Turandot it was goosebumps time and elation. They were so clearly enjoying their performance and one another and the vast audience.  A wonderful way to have spent an afternoon. I went to Roger Ebert's review and he was much more fulsome than I have been. Bravo Luciano, bravo Ron Howard.

Biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay

Here I am in Camden, Maine, birthplace of Edna St. Vincent Millay with her statue.  I'm 5-7, she was only 5-1, so you see she's bigger than life --which she often wished to be in real life. Her biography Savage Beauty, by Nancy Milford has been on my bedside table for over a month. She was beautiful, everyone said so and her pictures are lovely up to her 40s. The book is 400 pages long and  dense and I usually read only 10 or 29 pages just before going to bed. Her poetry is not read much now, it's a style that is no longer popular.

I knew almost nothing about her when I started the book. It is very detailed and quotes many of her poems. (She especially wrote sonnets - or 14 line poems that do not necessary fit into usual sonnet definition). She had a very, very difficult childhood. The oldest of three sisters, she was often, from age 10 or so, left in charge of the little ones in a big cold house, with very little money for food or anything. Her mother was nurse who took live-in jobs that might last a couple of weeks. Her father  deserted after the youngest was born and rarely sent any money.  

She was undoubtedly a genius with words and created a reputation very early and was for many years the most popular poet in America (more so than Frost). Her life was largely chaos.  After various lesbian affairs at Vassar she discovered men and could have been called a nymphomaniac. After a long time she married a Dutchman who totally adored her. His family had a fortune from import/export business but he devoted himself to Edna (or Vincent as she was very often called). Her poetry had the kind of sales best selling novelists enjoy today. Her stage presence (and radio readings) were apparently magnificent.

The further I got into the book the more I realized that she was a monster of selfishness and whimsicality. She smoked constantly and drank hugely and by the last ten years of her life had become a serious alcoholic, morphine addict (as well as many other drugs). She pulled herself out of drug stupors late in life to write propagandistic poetry about why America should NOT be isolationist but should fight Hitler. I am not a strong historian but I was shocked how extremely isolationist America was even after Hitler invaded Holland and Paris.

The book was always an interesting read but also distressing to follow her self-destruction, her utter lack of self-control or understanding about people or finances, her manipulation of people and final irresponsibility.  (And her family was not much better although her husband was almost a saint.)

I've been given the even larger biography of Leonardo di Vinci to read next.  I won't be writing about that book for a long time yet.

Summer is around the corner

This magnificent lily was part of a lovely bouquet granddaughter Cori gave me for my birthday earlier this month. Oh, my, how time flies. I should rename this blog Big 8-0  And Moving On.  In all my younger years I never really contemplated anything over 70 so it's all an amazing surprise. And I just realized I've been living on Cape Cod for about 12 years. How is that possible??? Well it was one day at a time like all of life.  And it's all good.

Summer here on usually doesn't really happen until after the solstice, and that's a week from Friday. I have my first of the season walk on the beach this morning, about 65 degrees and humid. One sunbather out, and others casually clad -- but barefoot.

When I see the dawn I always think of Kipling's
"Road to Mandalay" ...
the dawn comes up like thunder...
this photo seems to say exactly that.
This time of year I'm not always awake to see the dawn as I have breakfast (as is true about 2/3rds of the year. Now sunlight  seems to soak through the bedroom curtains and wake me about 5:00 before the sun is actually up. So I close my eyes until the clock radio gives me about three minutes of music and one or two short minutes of local news including the weather forecast. Soon I'll be having a quick breakfast and taking myself to Long Beach for an early walk -- some mornings I'm alone and feel I own the place.

Stash smashing

I've decided to see how many scrap quilts I can get done this summer. This is the first stash-smasher -- strip pieced on drier sheets. Top is finished, quilting next.  I havent't decided on a back yet but it will also be a stash-smasher using at least 6 fabrics. 

I've begun a selvage quilt -- I have quite a fat bag of selvages to use -- I'm making a dent, but really only a dent. More on that later.

Winter?

So far Cape Cod has had a winter of very little snow while vast part of the US have had many serious storms. This morning a mere two inches (perhaps 4 or 5  in a few places)
has prompted late openings for schools. I am happy for the guys who've outfitted their pick-up trucks with plow blades; they've made very little money this winter and I imagine many had planned uses for the money they are not making.  However, last year we had three serious snow storms in April. So who knows...?

I've enjoyed the sunny days although not the sharp winds that have come with some of them. But I wrap a warm scarf around my neck and put on my bunny fur (real, yes, I know!) earmuffs, a pair of gloves, the sunglasses I wear as a deterrant against macular degeneration (Oh, how I hope it helps!)

I don't need to go out until about 2:00, by then removing snow from my car (in a lot, no garage) will be easy. Each morning when I sit down at my breakfast table looking toward the lot, I see a car with headlights on. After five or maybe ten minutes a woman gets in the car and drives away. For a while I thought it was a husband or wife who went out early to clear and heat the car for a spouse. Then I realized this is the age of automation. That woman started her car before she was ready to leave. She pushed a button, some invisible signal turned the car on, readied it for her comfort. My car doesn't do that; I don't want that comfort. 

Not quite a Ludite, nevertheless, I am happy without many technologies others enjoy. No television for many years. Yes, I missed many things, real-time happenings, entertainments. "How do you have time for ...?" people ask me about what I've read or made or done. "I have no tv, no husband, no smart phone," I say.  I am not a recluse, by NO means, but I am happy to live without the cacophony of the modern world. After I brush the snow off my small car, I let the classical music radio station play and drive to my many commitments. How much comfort, how much news, how much entertainment do I need? Only about as much as my chosen lifestyle brings.

The number is a FACT to contend with

A recent photo: I'm the woman in profile listening to the enthusiastic younger woman. It's the left profile, I wish it were the right profile -- not from a vanity point of view but because I have a streak of blue in my hair on that side and people remark about it frquently. The streak is a bit of rebellion and happened because of my granddaughter which has been the impetus of the few other white haired women who add bright color to their hair. At my birhday my grandaughter gave me a pallet of chalky one-use hair colors. The blue got used up quickly, and the green too, the red did not. I went to a costmetics store and  purchased tubes of blue and green semi-permanent color. I've enjoyed it. And I'm feeling pleased that I'm influencing a few others.  One woman who has short, very attractive white hair asked about my hair dresser, saying she would like to ask hers to color her hair.  "I do it myself" I said but told her I know someone hair like hers who mentioned thinking of lavender in the front. Lo and behold! I saw this woman  a few days ago.  She has a halo of lavender  around her face and looks wonderful.  It make me happy to think I've inspired someone else to enjoy "playing" with her white hair.

 A reader responded to my previous post. I don't believe I answerd her question about coping with being an older woman but I did admit that the Big 8-0 was a stunner because I never contemplated being this age. I think of it now as having found myself at a railroad crossing where the signal lights are flashing and the barrier bar is slowly descending. There's a train coming even though I can't see it yet. Obviously, I don't want to be on that railroad when the train arrives although it WILL arrive.

I've been reminded of the dangers these first weeks of the year. First I was hustled to have a pacemaker implanted because my heart was skipping occasional beats. It didn't seen especially important to me, but the cardiologist thought I needed this super-digital gadget put under the muscles on my clavical. It's a bump that is barely there, the scar is barely noticable. But apparently the heart is not missing a beat these days. As I told the MD, I am not older than the women in my family lived to be, and they all died of congestive heart failure. They didn't have modern care, and they knew little about diet and exercise which I have known for quite a long time. I had a stent placed about 15 years ago and have taken the recommended drugs.

If one lives long enough, these days, we wind up with an accumulation of foreign objects keeping us going. Most people I know have had cataract surgery as have I. Many have knee or hip relacements; my titanium hip "ball" was the result of an impulsive leap I didn't make, not a matter of over-used joint. Of coures we've all got foreign matters in our mouths with filings and crowns and many have implants. I have internet friends with litanies of very nasty physical disabilities that come with age.

Then, too, two people I care about have died just recently. A long, long time friend in Florida who was ten years younger than I.  She was overweight most of her life and I think that contributed via diabets. And a poet-teacher who had a six-month struggle with liver cancer which he handled with dignity. He wrote a poem saying "Don't cry for me, I am a lucky man" and that many of his later years were "gravy." (A quote from poet/writer Raymond Carver who died at a younger age.) I think it's okay to mix metaphors  at this point, forget the railroad crossing, and think about gravy and maybe add in chocolate bonbons too. Being 80, so far, is a very good thing despite the various warnings.

Lax or Lazy?

This is another dawn photo.  I can't resist them, for their beauty, for the metaphoric awareness of another day, sometims with a golden sun.  My windows face east. I am an early riser so all winter I see the dawn. And often I am enchanted by the colors, the cloud formations so I take a photo.  Then I sit own and have breakfast. Twenty minutes later when I sit here at the computer, still facing the dawn, I have to pull the curtain because it's so bright I can only see dawn-light, not the computer  screen. I watch as the sun rises a little more to the north now and will take note as it moves to be directly in front of me in another two months when the spring equinox arrives. This very simply appreciation of nature is a habit. I write poems about it sometimes.

Now we are in another year; I have ignored the blog for half a year.  Lax or lazy or just not inspired? Some of all of the above. Now I have moved from Big 7-0 to Big 8-0. This numeral, a standing eternity sign, I recognize, but am surprised. I never thought about becoming 80; somehow it seems particularly weighty. And yet I don't feel any older than I did during all the 70s. Okay, I am a little stiiffer, it's harder to get up from my low 50's style sofa. But that's because I have not been walking as much (NOT in the winter, although there's an indoor track I keep promising myself I will use daily).

I have just had a pace maker sewn into my clavical area. That was a bit of a surprise but it was not really a difficulty or big deal.  I have been aware for a long time that I have outlives other members of my family  except for Old Uncle Joe who was a quiet curmudgeon who lived alone many years after wife, Emma died.  He had the company of dogs and made occasional trips into the  Kentucky town near-by.  He spent much of his time making little cedar boxes which were never well sanded and never  painted or quite finished. And finally, when he seemed to be going downhill with nothing but hotdogs in the refrigerator, his sisters-in-law (by then both widows) packed him up and punked him down at his one nephew's home (my brother) where he did remain long. By then he was pushing 90, crochety beyond anything his hostess could cope with so he was put in a nursing home.

I barely knew Uncle Joe. We visited a few times a year -- it was most of an hour's drive to Dry Ridge,  Kentucky in those days before the bridges over the Ohio River and the improved roads. I always knew the story (myth, truth, whatever) that he had been born prematurely at four pounds and spent the first few months with a dresser drawer for a crib. But he was the first of seven sons.  My father the second, two others who lives to maturity and three who died very young. But ours was not a family that told family stories.  That is all I know. And I am not one to dig into it further. But the paternal side of the family was not the one with heart disease. That was the material side and I'm dong well with modern medicine and surgery and such.  Perhaps I will write more about this subject tomorrow, or next week.  Right now I have to be somewhere soon.  It won't be six months before I come back.