New Series of Old Coot Ruminations

Again sporadic in posts.  This is really frustrating because: 1. I have plenty of time to write. 2.  When I sit at the computer, I am sorely drawn to Facebook where I find the latest word from many of my grandchildren, though I tire occasionally of the obsesssion with Harry Potter and Dr. Who.  ( I have to admit to a small obsession with Dr. Who when it was the real Doctor  with the scarf reaching his feet.) 3. My brain is so fuzzy that it prefers Spider Solitaire to anything that requires thinking.  4. Etc.

I sometimes wonder which is more frustrating, not being able to remember the names of friends  (I get along with looking them in the eye and saying “Hi, buddy>” .  If I have to talk about my friends, I can usually describe them well enough that Janet (my wife) can fill in the blanks; or having to ask my son to unscrew the lid off the jam jar (ore even worse the Diet Mountain Dew bottle.

I am astonished at the way physical durability diminishes.  About a year and a half ago i dug foundations and laid a combination of railroad ties and concrete blocks to lay up and level a space for a back patio, which space, with the help of my son Stuart I filled with and packed down dirt, then hauled in a trailer load of concrete pavers with which to cover the space.  The pavers still sit solemnly in stacks at the end of the patio, and  the ground to which they belong  is no longer level (Erosion and the habit of the dogs belonging to my children of digging little dens in it to cooll off have had their effect.  My back yard is such a shambles that if I didn’t have a six foot fence surrounding it, the neighborhood association vigilantes would have long since strung me up.

With all this, the most frightening and frustrating thing in my life is the pain Janet has,(a few years ago, she came to hear me sing with a choir in a university Christmas concert and fell off a badly designed step landing which had no rail and broke her femur in three pieces, which was fastened back together strongly but not painlessly with metal patches on the bone installed by a brilliant orthopedist.  WE were advised to sue the university because of the unsafe design but the lawyer we hired surrendered because the university was declaring some kind of “eminent domain” for itself.  (The good thing was that they repaired  and put rails along the landings ---there were more than one dangerous landing -so it won’t happen again.)  Her leg still gives her terriible pain, and her health is much worse than it was,   But we keep plugging along.

Well, I have repented or reinvented or something.

My oldest daughter, who lives in Florida, recently got a new computer, and when talking to me on the phone she revealed that she had found the ‘three score” blog and is reading it starting from the archives.

This aroused my curiosity enough that I went back and read some of the early things I posted and had a revelatory epiphany.   I can write the things that I post on FaceBook, or at least the same kinds of things.  I don’t have to get deeply into some thoughtful essay.  I think the last election, some of the things I thought about at the time, some things I even wrote about at the time but didn’t post and--- well I just got writer’s block trying to do something I really didn’t want to do.   The heck with it.

I have had a series of adventures, not big ones, but significant ones to me and I think I will just write about some of them.  I smashed my face into the concrete again, invested in a smart phone (which convinced me that one should mess around with technical things that are smarter than he is), got , literally, ripped off by a hospital, and Janet is having physical problems that concern me.  I will try to take a moment, at least once a week and probably more often, now that I have convinced myself that I can do this again without any physical body parts falling off.

The thing that is in my mind right now is a continuing theme for the blog.  Getting old is, literally, a pain in the butt, among other things.  It has recently been a moment of pride when Janet hands me a can of soda and asks me to pry it open for her.   For the last several months, I have had to use a coin, a pocket knife or an available piece of metal to pry open my own soda,, and am a bit humiliated when I have to do that which Janet could do as well as I.

I have been feeling a bit smug about having lost seventy or eighty pounds in the past year or so.  I smugly gave advice to others (which is good advice, but…) on not snacking, eating smaller portions, eating organic Greek yogurt, etc. etc. etc.     About Thanksgiving time I began to sense, from symptoms that are probably not appropriate  to discuss in this post, that I had a urinary infection.  I went to the Doctor.  He gave me a prescription for Cipro, had me come back in a couple of days to give a “sample”, and called me up the next afternoon to tell me that my bacteria were having such fun partying with Cipro, that I should cast out my Cipro, and he would have to give me a much more powerful medicine, a combination of a couple of different antibiotics, that were so powerful that he also gave me a prescription for  some extra strong probiotics because this new stuff was so powerful it would kill all the organisms in my gut that digest my food.

My regular pharmacy didn’t have the new stuff in stock so they called around and found some at Wal-Mart.  I went to Wally World and presented my prescription and waited for an eternity till they got it put together (side note:  Has any one noticed that in most Wal-Mart parking lots they now have parking places set aside for pharmacy customers specifying a fifteen minute parking limit?     What a farce?  No one who goes into a Wally world pharmacy gets out in fifteen minutes.)

At any rate when the prescription was finished they assigned me to a “counselor” of some kind to discuss my prescription.  She apologized that I had been kept waiting for so long but the she said, “Most people who need this prescription are not able to come pick it up personally, the prescription is picked up by some one else”   If they say that  wouldn’t it make you wonder?  It did me.

Even this stuff wasn’t completely successful.  Though I felt a lot better, and felt “symptom free’  my tests didn’t agree, and I was sent to a Urologist who gave me two other consecutive extra strong antibiotics.  It was well into January before everyone was satisfied that my infection was gone.

The troubling thing is, that even though I am still being very careful about the foods and the amounts that I eat, since my “cure”, I have gained a little over ten pounds.  I think, and at least one of my doctors concurs, that I have had a low grade urinary infection for well over a year, and that it should get credit (or blame) for most of my weight loss.  That is really disgusting. 

I’m Alive

This might be a more significant title than I had intended.  I have no intention of making this an “organ recital”, but my failure to post in months was in part caused by ill health and in part because I had a raging angry post half written about he election and I decided not to do it, but my imagination and energy were limited.  I have made some doctors richer, and frightened both myself and my family with a series of physical maladies that began as I shopped on “black Friday the started on Thursday” and just seem to have gotten a lot better for New Years.

I may post about politics once more but not now.  I have a lot of things to tell you (I am actually writing this because , if I have lost all my former readers with my slackness, I am ultimately writing for my progeny and their progeny to know how I have felt and reacted as I passed through the three score and more and get closer to four score.  (I wonder if I should change the name of the blog if I reach four score.)

I have had a wonderful Holiday season in spite of some physical problems.  I have been to Columbia, SC for Thanksgiving with my daughter, one of my favorite dogs, my wife and son.  I spent a ridiculous amount of money without even getting to more than one or two of Columbia’s great restaurants.  (I swear that there aren’t many cities in the country with more fine restaurant per capita the Columbia.)  I prepared the turkey as usual. a custom that is about to cease, and did the same for family here at Christmas. 

My daughter even coerced me into playing a board game (a favorite activity twenty years ago, but one that I rarely participate in any more.  My span of attention has become such that I don’t often win anymore, and I hate to play without at least some chance of winning.  I attended some of the best church services in my life, and feel spiritually renewed and strengthened.  I used to be a scripture reader and have let that slide, but for the last few weeks I have been reading the scriptures for a half hour or more almost every evening.

I’ve got to talk dogs for a moment.  My daughter’s dog, Roscoe is an aging Basset hound with the most expressive  face ever, and a real desire to love and be loved by others.  My third son has two dogs.  His long time pit=bull lab cross  passed away awhile ago, and he has been rescuing dogs since.  He has  a three legged small lady dog that is a perpetual motion machine and a black dog that is just reaching puberty and while starting out as a small dog is rapidly become a big one.  All three dogs are well trained and really like to have fun with us folks.

We betrayed the three legged one over around Thanksgiving.  Since we moved into our house about five years ago Janet has hated the blah looking green carpet that attracts dirt and dust  and. . .  I collected a decent tax return last year and we had been saving so we went to Lumber Liquidators, and a contractor  recommended by them and had most of that carpet replaced with beautiful wood.  Roxy, the little three legged dog, hates it with a passion.  With three legs (one rear leg missing when she became part of the family, she can’t get traction, and  for a perpetual motion dog that is a form of torture that we hadn’t anticipated.  She still likes to come visit us, but would rather stay in thye yard or on the back porch than come in the house.  (A total revision of attitudes, she used to prefer dashing from room to room in the house)  I have apologized to her, but I don’t think I am forgiven yet.

Anyway I  am going to try to get some stuff on paper about the process  and activities included in getting to be three score and ten and some more before my brain totally turns to mush(seems a rapid development right how) and plan to post more often and less politically than recent posts.  Happy New Year, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and I am going to bed right now.   

Silly thoughts

I got back to bed this morning and slept till ten thirty.  I felt like I had slept the day away, but I way thoroughly awake for a change.  I actually read several chapters of a book without dozing then we went into town and tried to get some issues tied down so that we can replace some of the carpet in our house with “engineered wood” what ever that is.

As we drove through the Wallyworld parking lot I noticed (not for the first time) that a number of the parking spaces were reserved for Pharmacy patrons.  Fifteen minutes only.  I had to laugh out loud.  If any of you have tried to get a prescription filled in Wal-Mart, you know that NO ONE has ever received a prescription in fifteen minutes.  The time line is ignored.  It is like the ubiquitous  Vonage commercial on the TV where a number of people toss away their old bills from the telephone company and tell us about the wonderful experiences that  they have had with Vonage.  NOW they throw away their old phone bill.  It is clear that if they tell the truth they have been with Vonage long enough to have  had those experiences so why are they just NOW throwing away their old bills. (meaning they have just joined).

We were driving to Savannah on Monday to check in with Lumber Liquidators to see if we could save some money on the new flooring.  As we left town we were passed by a black SUV and I noticed that the left rear wheel was not perpendicular to the ground.  I don’t know how the wheels are set to be square with the ground but I could tell that the SUV was going to wear out the inner side of the tire.  I drew the family’s attention to the car and stated that I was glad that wasn’t our car.  About half way to Savannah, guess what?  I blew out my left rear tire.   We pulled over as fast as we could and got the tire changed for the little do-nut spare that comes with modern cars.  Guess what else, the tire was completely worn out on the inside.   When we checked the other rear tire it was worn the same way and hade wires sticking out from under the tread.  The tires were mounted like this /—\.  These tires were perfect five thousand miles ago because , almost in the same spot on the highway, back about Mother’s day I ran over a piece of steel and broke the wheels, tires, etc. on the driver’s side.  I had to take the car to a Mazda dealer because no one else carried the replacement goodies and after two or three weeks in the garage, the car was returned to me with new tires and everything was in “perfect” alignment.  These were the tires that blew.  The car is back in the Mazda garage being re-repaired and re-tired.  Whee!!! Ain’t life fun?

Well, it is bedtime again.   If there is nothing posted on this blog before morning, you will know that I slept all the way through.

One of those things!!!!!

Since the Presidential Debate, I have tried to ignore political situations (Easier said than done), and have begun to ruminate about some of the stuff that was the original incentive for starting this blog, that is, what happens when one reaches the stage of three score and ten and more.  I had my seventy eighth birthday last summer and the “more” than three score and ten is beginning to become more and more of a problem. 

There are so many things that really need done around our house, and I am less and less able to accomplish them.  My shoulders, with their absent rotator cuffs are getting to be painful enough that they wake me in the middle of the night (I am writing this at 4:16 AM) and don’t want to let me go back to sleep until ------(I am good at falling asleep at random moments during the day, when I don’t want to).  I can’t successfully do anything to anything above shoulder level, including (occasionally) brushing my hair. (I do wish I could clean off the ceiling fans once in a while)

I have remodeled every house that we have owned in the past forty years, and am getting ready to pay some contractor a fortune to remove a lot of our carpeting and put down simulated wooden floors.  A task that I could easily have done for myself just four or five years ago.

I am hopelessly out of fashion.  I see commercials for department stores that show pretty women gamboling about in short sexy dresses that show a lot of leg wearing, what looks for all the world, like the galoshes my mother used to make me wear when it rained sixty five years ago. 

I try tell myself that folks are “caring” for me when they insist of taking my arm whenever I come to a curb, but I wish they would wait till I think I need it.  My neurologist yells at me to use a walker more often but it often makes things  more difficult than it helps.  I think I mentioned in a post last year that when I first went to see the pain management doctor, last year, that she watched me walk around the examining room and threatened “Dr. Johnson (some people still pay attention to my PhD) if you come into this office one more time without a cane, I am going to make you stand in the corner”

Oh well, I think one eye is closing on me so I will try going back to bed to sleep for awhile. 

Continuum Yuk

This is a supplement to my last post that I started writing in my mind  within minutes of the last post’s arrival.  I kept wondering why so many  folks cannot accept anything by an opponent as valid.  Before I hold forth on that, though, I have to apologize for my off the cuff last comment on my last post.  One of my few constant readers asked me what I thought of Harry Reid’s comment that Romney is a disgrace to Mormons, to which I replied that I think that Harry Reid is a disgrace to Mormons.  One of the things that Mormons are taught early in their years is that no one but our ultimate Judge has any right to sit in judgment of the righteousness or faith of others.  I am ashamed of my quick judgment of Senator Reid and I have spent some time on my knees asking for forgiveness, not only for  my sin (Our Lord said that he will forgive whom He will forgive, but of us it is required that we forgive all men) but asking forgiveness for the good Senator, if he feels he needs it.—or not.

Back to the ranch:  One early things we learn in the study of Communication and Semantics is that we are all subject to the temptations of selective exposure.  That means that most of us, especially in the case of things we hold dear, tend to select those bits of information that support our current feelings and understandings.

Supplementing this bit of info, I have been known by those who know me best as a news “Junkie”.  It is more difficult now in the era of 24 hour news exposure from multiple sources, but I have been known to watch the news  from one source while taping that from other sources to get the broadest picture from the widest points of view.  I still watch FOX News, CNN, MSNBC, (which is pretty difficult they are so inept) and all three of the major networks.  Taping is not as necessary as in the past because CNN and Fox broadcast everything multiple times so one can look at things from a variety of perspectives.  I would find myself really puzzled by my friend’s attacks on Fox News for lying or taking one point of view (frequent term is Faux News) and I admit that their commentators (Hannity especially) takes a paint of view that sometime I find uncomfortable, but even in commentaries one would rarely find on CNN, never on MSNBC, and rarely on any of the former National Networks the equivalent of opposing points of view as effective and as often as one will see such as Juan Williams, Alan Combes, Bob Bechel (I know I spelled that wrong)) and the wide variety of Democratic campaign officials and political figures.  (Many Democratic  folks are invited but never come.  O Reilly would kill to interview the President, but the President would never come for such an interview in part because no one on the O Reilly show ever gets to complete a sentence in the interview without interruption.)

I do have to say that generally those on Fox who deal with hard news are evenhanded and incredible effective,  I found myself glued to the TV back in the time of the New Orleans  Hurricane and I think that if there was objective thinking, The Fox News  reporter (whose name my seventy eight year old brain just wont recall) should have won a Peabody for his work in New Orleans..   THe pejoratives generally hurled at FOX are classical reminders that we all are subject to the use of selective exposure, listening only (or mainly) to those who strengthen or uphold  our already held opinions and criticizing any who oppose us.

I don’t know how intercollegiate debate is done now, but I had the good fortune to spend two years debating with a great coach and in debate at that time one had to have an affirmative case and a negative case and had to look at both sides of an issue very deeply, and to know how to take either side with passion and integrity. (there is a place for integrity or both sides of every issue.)

I said in the beginning of the previous post that  I fail to understand how anyone with an IQ over forty can support the president.  Taking selective exposure and the passion that exists in social issues, on reflection, for one who believes strongly in the principle of socialized medicine (and any who followed my blog five or six years ago, know that I had many affirmative things to say about it)  or who was/is emotionally caught up in  the idea of the first Black President can overlook many evidentiary items in order to maintain that thought.  I am still personally frightened by the thought of what our nation will be like if he wins.

A passion for certain social goals will lead one to oppose other good goals.  As Mormons, we are taught almost from infancy to follow the Motto “Choose the Right”.  To earn or just to buy a CTR (get it? Choose  The  Right) ring is really exciting for many young people.  Last week in church I noticed some really nice people that I love passing around bumper stickers (not to me, they know me) which said       LDS- CHOOSE THE LEFT.

It is difficult.

I was away on vacation (actually a combination of dog and house sitting for my daughter so that she could go to a family reunion that we just didn't’ have the energy to go to after our trip to Washington and a few days in Hilton Head where we, mostly, vegged) and without access to the internet.  I had real ambitions to post early upon our return, and had lots of ideas, none including whining about our health, of things to write about.

Every time I sat down to write, the turbulence and vitriol of the current political season filled my mind.  I came up with four or five political rants, and suddenly realized that political rants  were not needed.

I am really nervous about our society right now.  Political emotions are so high that one has to be suspicious (no matter where one personally stands) that everything that is written or spoken politically is suspect.

I don’t think that most folks sit down to make up lies about each other, but when emotions are this high, clear headed thinking becomes very rare.   The personal paradigms are so totally opposed that no-one seems to be able to rationally discuss politics.

I am, and have been for years, a political conservative, but I have been able to engage in discussions with friends with other views, (and as a Theatre professional, communications teacher form Political Science student –almost three years- I have been in the company of a lot more liberal folks that those would agree) but this season discussion is out, unless one chooses to offend friends.

As a conservative, but one who studies both written and televised information from most sources, I find it difficult to understand how anyone who is objective and has an IQ over forty can support Barak Obama for another term.  However, I live in a company of a great many people whom I love and appreciate at a number of levels (definitely with IQ’s over forty, many with Doctorates, Masters etc. etc. who with their paradigm cannot understand how any feeling thinking person can fail to support Obama.   The passions are so rigid on both sides that reaction is almost totally emotional.

I am a Mormon.  Our church officially and directly will not allow politics in meetings or anywhere else.  Proclamations are frequently presented in church that the church does not take sides in elections.  (Occasionally they take a stand on what are considered moral ISSUES.

In one of our local meetings, one speaker  said something affirmative about Mitt Romney and several people stood up and left the service.   Mitt is a Mormon, and in our congregation, I suspect a fair portion of the congregation could fit into the category “Mormons who hate Mitt”.  Actually that is a little over the top, a better category would be “Mormons who would and do emphatically oppose Mitt.” They would deny the word “hate” but the voices—well????

What worries me is that with these two opposing paradigms so entrenched. no matter who wins the election, can anyone successfully (and Constitutionally ) govern our country.  The study of history, and my personal experience cause me to wonder, if not to doubt.   I can easily imagine mobs from both sides disruption our land for a long time.

No complaints here.

A couple of nights ago, I had just finished a late filing of my income tax (even with an automatic extension) and I collapsed into bed.  I checked the tube for a brief visit with the news and found it so depressing I flipped along until I could find something interesting.  I tuned into Public Television and they were showing Gene Kelly movies in honor of his hundredth birthday.  I fell into the middle of one of my favorite films of all time, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, where I arrived just before my favorite part, the part I call the AMERICAN IN PARIS ballet.  I was caught up in, what has always seemed to me to be an almost flawless telling of a story and revealing a wide variety of emotions in dance.

Most of this ballet is actually revealed as a dream sequence, or reverie that begins with Kelly discovering that his love is committed  to marry one of his best friends.  The ballet begins when Kelly, in response to his pain, decides to take a beautiful blonde who is one of his sponsors as an artist to a wild artist costume bacchanal where he encounters his love with her fiancé and says a final goodbye.   The remainder of the scene (about twenty five or thirty minutes) is his reverie about the possibilities and failures of his love life.

I watched, enthralled, and when the film had its inevitable and somewhat illogical,  happy ending I was left in a great mood.  If not for the likelihood of assassination or at least attack by my wife (and the fact that I was totally exhausted) I would have styed awake all night to watch SINGING IN THE RAIN,  and a couple of other Kelly movies.  As I turned  of the TV,  I reflected on one of the great lessons I learned from this film.

In the early sixties, when I was teaching theatre at Rhode Island College in  Providence R.I. I spent some time in one of my classes using this film and this scene as a great example of  American movie musicals.  I had one student in particular, a very bright and artistic young man who came to my office to discuss this in more detail.  I had a shooting script for the film in my office and we went though it in detail.  He was so taken by the ideas, that he located a showing of the film (in that  pre-computer day, I have no idea how he did so) and drove an hour or so into Connecticut to see it.  He came to my office a few days later, and revealed that he had a terrible experience in the film.  He found the shifts of character and costume in the middle of the sequence jarring and ultimately alternated between boredom and irritation as he watched.   He used specific examples and specific criticisms and was very disappointed that I had set him up for this.

As I listened, I understood something that I had perceived , but never really crystalized in my mind before.  It is the ultimate explanation of the way thinking  people simply cannot believe  that other thinking people cannot understand  why their feelings about religious, political, or other important concepts are not shared .

I am conservative.  I once wrote a note to Rush Limbaugh accusing him of distorting conservatism.  I am old enough and have been conservative long enough that I remember being really angry when the Republican Party chose Eisenhower over Bob Taft.  (I know, most of you don’t know what the heck I am talking about) but I have been in theatre most of my life but most of my students, like most theatre people have become wild eyed liberals.  I can’t logically understand why or how they still support Obama and as we interact on Face Book I frequently get notes asking why in the world, I don’t think as they do.

Our interpretations of most things in our lives are colored by our paradigms.  The entire experience  of our lives colors our interpretation of almost all the important phenomena which we encounter.  That is true of my young student in Rhode Island interpreting a musical which I loved and it is true of many who support President Obama while I do not.

I’ll be honest, I am terribly worried about the fate of our country if he is re-elected and people whom I honor and love are equally worried about the nation if he is not.   Janet and I went to a movie the other day called HOPE SPRINGS, which is a movie starring Tommy Lee Jones and Meryl Streep ( I  probably spelled that wrong)  trying, with the help of a counselor) to figure out what has happened to their thirty year marriage.  Jan and a laughed till we cried  about their adventures, and most people who have been married a long time would recognize, at least moments of their lives or those of friend.  We recommended it to most of the coots and cootesses that we know, and many of them had seen it and loved it as we did, but one lady, who had attended with her husband almost spit as she expressed her hatred of the film.  She came at it from a different paradigm than Janet and I.  As far as  “truth” is concerned, we are both right.