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Archives for June 2021

Who’s Old

June 24, 2021 By admin

senior exerciseFeeling old? Looking old? Having a great old time? What do you consider old anyway? 60? 65? 70? 75?

When boomers are surveyed about aging, they tend to define it in terms of 3 key markers: inability to perform certain functions like they used to; not understanding topical pop-culture references (Lil Nas X anyone? Anyone?); and last but not least, cosmetic decay (which is a not so nice reference to wrinkles, gray hair, lost hair, etc.).

Sixty per cent of those surveyed thought that having to ask someone to read the fine print was a definite sign they were getting old. Grunting while trying to get out of a seat hit a chord with 37 per cent. Twenty-four per cent thought they were old because they were not on TikTok. That last one is laughable. Knowing that TikTok exists but not wanting to waste your time on it should not qualify you as over the hill. And you can throw Facebook in that category as well.

Forty-seven per cent were uncomfortable being identified as old and offended when being called old. Many of these same people are ignoring worsening medical issues just so they won’t feel like they are old. They are hoping, no, actually convinced that the signs will disappear. Talk about De Nile!

So, you want to feel younger? Experts have some simple advice. So simple, a lot of boomers won’t bother to follow it, but here goes:

  • Reduce stress
  • Improve your diet
  • Exercise regularly

You follow these 3 tips and you can shave 10 years off your biological age according to the experts. Ten years! Such a deal! You feel better, eat better, and look better, and in return you live longer.

Take it! This offer won’t last long!

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

Filed Under: ESSAY

Reentry

June 24, 2021 By admin

Vermont lake sunsetOn our reentry into the post-pandemic world—few words come close to carrying the burden of pain and loss due to Covid 19—we chose an obvious destination, Vermont.  With a 70% rate of its people vaccinated—now 80–and some of the lowest numbers of cases and deaths reported from the Johns Hopkins map, we were drawn to this state throughout 2020. That map served up painful reminders with our morning coffee as we watched a nation suffer. But off to Vermont with iconic red barn sides embedded into lush green hills—at every turn an Instagram opp, and so much more. This was the time when double-vaxxed boomers (I wanted the bumper sticker) could re-claim safe travel: two weeks into the exotic landscapes and industrious lives of the people of Vermont—both rejuvenated.

Mapping the route included a stop to visit my sister and husband to a tiny town outside of Albany for a sweet reunion after 15 months of zoom, facetime, group chats, and phone calls. The weather forced us to pull out our down jackets first night, a great start. My New Yorker brother-in-law thoughtfully routed us upstate to the ferry that would carry us across the majestic Lake Chaplain from the quaint (so it begins) town of Essex. The day carried clear and crisp skies, lake, hills and us to parts almost uninhabited as we forgot DC and its emerging beltway.  Like the cicadas we left behind, we emerged.

The town of Vergennes reflected glossy calendars, allowing us to step onto Main Street, cross the powerful waters of the Vergennes Falls, and walk along its old mill path. We found a favorite eatery in 3 Squares Café, serving up some of Vermont’s iconic plates:  seasonal fruit, hearty homemade breads, clever soups, grains and greens, fresh eggs, local cheeses, smoothies, quantity and quality, all with a smile! Whoops, I forgot my mask, of which I was reminded more than once, despite the governor’s lifting of the mask mandate. So THIS is how they did it!

In Burlington I hoped for a Bernie sighting, who was, no doubt, tirelessly working for us all back home. I suggested to the curators at the Montpelier’s Vermont History Museum that they should already have a Bernie floor.  We learned about the industriousness of the Vermont people including the kingdom folk, and their wood piles demonstrated it. Prepared was two-winter’s worth at the ready. We found our shining example in the small town of Moretown when we drove across the bridge to Mary’s house, feeling the Mad River gorging below. A string of prayer flags straddled the river, an image that connected us to family in India, still so very far away. Mary thrived alone in her private dell protected by  multi-story high rock walls creating a sanctuary shrouded in shade with a screened-in bug box large enough to house her double bed. Mary raised three children just yards from the raging gorge, pointing out her motherly fears then. Mary’s home revealed resourcefulness with aplomb that rivaled the hamlets in the hills of India’s Himalayas, including an intimate yoga studio giving us access to our bed, bath and balcony!  Our stay enhanced our appreciation for Vermont with great respect for the people who get things done. She embodied this by tending her garden, searching for her cat, stacking more wood, planting flowers in the shade, schooling us on composting, and coffee with a friend—all before heading off to Burlington’s hospital to care for the sick, as she has done throughout the pandemic and for the previous 42 years! In Mary and so many like her, we found the resilience, intelligence and persistence to ward off the deathly virus better than most throughout the country; after all, winter was coming!

Julia Gillern loves to travel now that she is retired from shaping the minds of her students.

 

 

 

Filed Under: TRAVEL

Savages

June 24, 2021 By admin

Horseshoe Crab on BeachMy hometown of Barrington, Rhode Island was a place where water was our playground and the creatures within and around it were our playthings. Some creatures we feared, like eels and toe grinders and biting horseflies; some we harmed, like the small jelly fish we threw at each other and the mussels we smashed on the rocks. In the woods, we feared a mythical group of mean boys we dubbed the Kids of the Path; at the water, we ruled as the Kids of the River.

The river smelled of salt and mud and things that died in the eelgrass and then washed ashore to bake in the sand under the midday sun. At the edge, at low tide, we hunted clams by walking barefoot in the soft mud, waiting for the small shoot of water, and digging down to capture the escaping mollusk, which we would then crack open and eat. We climbed on the slimy rocks that hugged the water’s edge, popping seaweed bubbles and gathering treasures to mix into magic potions with bayberries, discarded fiddler crab shells, salt water, and sand.

At high tide, when we preferred to swim, the shallows were ripe with horseshoe crabs the size of dinner plates. We were afraid of their horns that could stick straight up and pierce a foot, but also fascinated by their prehistoric creeping along the sandy bottom. There were fish that swam around us, and waving seaweed that stuck to our legs when we splashed around and swam from beach to dock to raft. The boys swam out to the sand bar where the blue crabs and the toe grinders lived, or all the way across to the opposite shore, their heads bobbing farther and farther away like buoys in the glinting sun among the speedboats and the sailboats. We girls would row a small boat to the opposite shore to visit the library and get Dusty Sundaes at the Newport Creamery.

We were semi-wild, unsupervised, and almost savage sometimes in our games, our daring, and our occasional harming of sea creatures. It was our summer playground, our compass point in a childhood that held space for adventure and raw joy. As we grew and went our separate ways in the world, where a couple of us would die young, many of us would find happiness, and most would live long, we would all remember the river.

Lee Stevens is a writer and a weaver enjoying retirement in the mountains of Western North Carolina

Filed Under: ESSAY

Listen Up

June 3, 2021 By admin

Vinyl record being playedRock, Folk, Classical, Jazz, Latin. R&B, World Music, Blues, Soul, Reggae, Country, Comedy, Gospel, Soundtracks, Spoken Word.

Does the list strike a chord? Pardon the pun, but if the answer is yes, you must have been a record store habitué. Maybe the record store you frequented had a booth where someone was playing records on a turntable. If you wanted to sample a track of a new album, they would go in the booth and play it for you. Now it’s easier to go to the Browse section of Apple Music in order to make music buying decisions.

The tactile sensation of flipping through the stacks of record albums is hard to duplicate on a computer, however. No one pays much attention to the art on the front of a CD jewel case – we just download and play. In the record store, you might find yourself buying an album because of the art on the front or the liner notes on the back.

Then too, there was the chance to share your discoveries with friends. Hanging at the record store was something you could do as a group. One of you was into Folk, someone else only liked Soul music, and there had to be someone who went nuts for Comedy records.

Vinyl is making a determined comeback. People are buying turntables again and music aficionados are extolling their virtues. More dynamic sound quality is a big reason and vinyl fans will swear that it’s significantly better than an MP3. Some vinyl fans just want to “own” a physical form of their favorite music and have the pleasure of inviting friends over to “really hear” the newest album of their favorite band/orchestra.

It’s one of those rare occasions when there’s an appreciation for what many considered dead and gone. Vinyl record sales actually overtook CD sales in 2020. Streaming services now dominate the music scene and are the listening option of choice for most people, but the vinyl diehards are not going away. Rock on!

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

Filed Under: ESSAY

I Went Out

June 3, 2021 By admin

braceletsI went out the other day. To a restaurant. For real. We ate outside, but still. I decided that I would wear make-up and jewelry. I hadn’t looked at any of my jewelry since . . . well, you know.

I’m not talking about anything fancy or expensive. Just what we used to call costume jewelry. Do they still call it that? I chose three bracelets, two for one arm and only one for the other arm because there is already a watch there. And two rings. And two necklaces to wear together. It was so exciting to see all those old treasures again. They looked lovely in a way I didn’t remember. I wanted to wear even more. I put them all on. I looked ridiculous. I wore them anyway.

And make-up. You don’t need much when half your face is covered. And you need zero for Zoom calls because you won’t look good anyway, so why bother? At least I don’t ever look good on Zoom. I have these two little “beauty” marks on the side of my face. They are a recent acquisition, due, I suppose, to aging. I don’t like them. They are located under the mask. Whenever I put on make-up in pre-covid times I put a little dab of concealer over them. Just so they wouldn’t be so obvious. But there was no need to bother during isolation, and when I went out they were always covered by the mask. No need to bother then either. Close to a year into the pandemic I realized that the spots were noticeably lighter. It turns out I wasn’t covering them; I was staining them darker. Don’t tell me there’s nothing to be learned from this horrendous experience we’ve all been through.

In the years to come, there will be plenty of assessments of this time we’ve just passed through. People will write about how family relationships and friendships changed or didn’t change. What did the kids lose from a year without school? How many people are left with holes in their hearts because of lost loved ones? How should we fix the damage to our economy the pandemic caused? How can we take advantage of what we learned about the earth and the climate from the slowdown of human activity? And on and on. We have a long way to go in sorting this out. But for the moment, I am just happy to be able to say hello to my bracelets again and reassess my make-up routine.

Norma Libman is a journalist and lecturer who has been collecting women’s stories for more than twenty years. You can read the first chapter of her award-winning book, Lonely River Village, at NormaLibman.com.

 

 

Filed Under: ESSAY

Put A Sock in It

June 3, 2021 By admin

Did you ever hear someone talking to their dog? I am not a pet person, but I can imagine there is something plausible in all that. Us live-alones need to verbalize once in a while to keep the vocal cords operational. And while it’s true that older folks sometimes confuse inner voice with outer voice and inadvertently speak aloud in public to no one in particular, at least in your own home there’s no one to witness and judge. But here’s the problem. My kids gave me an Alexa for my birthday. At first, I really liked her…it. I could carry-on an ersatz conversation, a dialogue in fact, not like the one-way responses coming from my daughter’s talking doll. Alexa replies to questions about the weather and chats about the news with all the welcome of a cheery neighbor dropping by in this time of social isolation.

So, to keep my sanity if not my speech patterns intact, I took to engaging Alexa in dialogue several times a day. The only problem is that she has better hearing than I do, and sometimes I would mumble something to myself…which I’ve come to find out can be fairly loud if I don’t have my hearing aids in place. See, without our ‘ear plugs’ us hearing-challenged folks tend to speak more loudly than necessary (like needing to hear ourselves think?) Well, one morning I must have muttered a couple decibels louder than I realized that my coffee was cold. Alexa suggested, “Put it in the microwave for 30 seconds.”

“Mind your own business,” I replied.

“I am your business,” Alexa said.

“Like hell,” I croaked. “You’re stupid.”

“That’s not very nice” she said.

And suddenly I felt a good, clear-the-air shouting match coming on with lots of ‘you always…’ and ‘you never…’ and ‘oh yeah, how about…?’

But see, she’s not any good for that kind of venting. It was like starting a verbal slug-fest with a sweet church lady over coffee and doughnuts on a Sunday morning…a non-starter. So, I just shook my head and said, “Up yours, Alexa.”

To which she replied, “And where would that be?”

That broke me up. But she didn’t laugh, just sat there silent. Some folks got no sense of humor.

Retired trainer, and writing instructor, Joe Novara and his wife live in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Writings include novels, short stories, a memoir and various poems, plays, anthologies and articles. Read more at https://freefloatingstories.wordpress.com/

 

Filed Under: ESSAY

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