The Year the World Tilted

Some weeks the past taps you on the shoulder, and other weeks it drags you straight down the Rabbit Hole — the deep, winding kind that only long‑time bloggers know. Jean’s been keeping this blog for over a decade, which became her archive and a time capsule that she didn’t realize she was curating. And every so often, an old post rises to the surface and reminds her of who she was, what the world was doing, and how much life has shifted since then. But the year the world tilted isn’t just about Jean’s experience, it was everyone's, too...AI

Sometimes I go through the Rabbit Hole of reading my past posts. This blog goes back to 2012, so that rabbit hole is pretty deep — and with my failing memory, I end up reading about a lot of things I’d forgotten. That happened this week when a post titled Going Rogue popped up in my sidebar. It was written in April of 2020 during the height of the global COVID‑19 pandemic, when there was a toilet paper shortage and non‑essential shopping was forbidden by law.

I ended up reading all my pandemic posts and was reminded of things like going to my first Zoom meeting — a funeral for a close relative — and my brother spending weeks on end in a COVID hospital miles away from his family, not that the miles mattered because visitors were not allowed. I wrote about the refrigerated 18‑wheelers parked outside hospitals to hold the bodies the funeral industry couldn’t keep up with. At least those people didn’t end up in mass graves the way they did during the Flu Epidemic of 1918. My grandmother was among them, along with an estimated one‑third of the globe’s population.

We all went through a lot of hardships in our nationwide effort to prevent the spread of COVID‑19. Even with all the mask‑wearing, social distancing, limited places we could go, and businesses that shut down, the accumulated deaths due to the virus are recorded at 1,219,487 nationwide. It was the third leading cause of death in 2020 and 2021 behind heart disease and cancer, according to AI. And it would have been worse if not for Dr. Fauci standing firm against Trump pushing back against the precautions we were mandated to take. Remember Trump suggesting we should “drink bleach to kill the virus?”

I still find it hard to believe that some people would trust a president with no background in healthcare over a man who headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for nearly 40 years. A man who saw us through HIV/AIDS, SARS, the Swine Flu, MERS, and Ebola. A man who served under six presidents as the government’s leading expert on infectious diseases. To this day, Dr. Fauci says if we had started “mitigation" earlier, more lives could have been saved. But MAGA Republicans are still trying to discredit him because paranoid Trump thought Fauci was working for the Democrats to make him look bad. He seemed to think if no one mentioned the pandemic, we wouldn’t notice people in our communities dying like flying insects on a bug zapper. It saddens me that the administration is still trying to punish a man who gave most of his life to public service.

I didn’t want to just rehash day‑old news, so I Googled the phrase “good things that came out of the pandemic” and found these:

1. Remote working from home, which allows more flexibility for working moms.

2. The expansion of telehealth opportunities.

3. Curbside grocery pickup and online ordering for home delivery.

4. Expanded use of Zoom for public hearings, business meetings, and court proceedings.

5. A surge of new businesses and entrepreneurship that created new jobs.

6. Rapid funding to accelerate vaccine technology and research across the globe.

7. And last but not least, the pandemic allowed many people to reconnect with hobbies and family time. For example, people took up baking bread in such large numbers that flour and yeast were in short supply. Pet adoptions soared, and YouTube channels were born to teach us all kinds of things and keep us entertained.

Revisiting those old pandemic posts may seem self‑indulgent, but doing so reminded me — and anyone who cares to go down that rabbit hole — how fragile “normal life” really is. Those posts and their reader comments give us a peek into the lives and thought processes of ordinary people adapting to changes during extraordinary times.

Little by little, life filled itself in again. We went back to restaurants, back to concerts, back to hugging people without thinking twice. We learned how to live with the memory of what happened without letting it swallow us whole. We discovered how resilient we are. But the pandemic, hopefully, also taught us that public health isn’t a one‑and‑done chapter. The recent measles outbreaks — a disease we once had nearly eliminated — proves that the debate over vaccines, science, and community responsibility is still very much alive. ©

The Five‑Trick Pony Rides Down Memory Lane

Some stories don’t begin with inspiration; they begin with an itch. A tug. A little internal nudge that says, Hey, remember who you used to be? Today Jean follows that tug back to her art‑soaked past—marble dust, William Blake, big dreams, and the long undertow that pulled them out to sea. Along the way she picks up a few modern irritations, a MAGA fruit fly, and a reminder that kindness is sometimes a very slow weapon. It’s a walk down Memory Lane with a few sharp turns, a little humor, and the unmistakable voice of someone who’s lived enough life to tell it straight….AI

Some ponies are one‑trick ponies. Some are two‑trick ponies. If the topics I write about were a pony, I’d be a five‑trick pony. My subjects range from fellow residents in my independent living facility, my Mahjong obsession, my health‑care woes, politics, and—probably too often—I wander down Memory Lane.

Today I feel like wandering back to the days when I was obsessed with art, both making it and studying it. But like many people, dreams of greatness give way to life’s everyday struggles: making a living, building a life with a significant other, supporting parents as they need more and more help, and grieving when one of them dies. The heydays of my self‑indulgent art period drifted far out to sea, pulled down by an undertow so strong even Jacques Cousteau couldn’t have rescued it.

Etching print pulled from a metal plate

The print and poem above were created in the ’80s, shortly after my mom died suddenly, done in a printmaking class during my William Blake phase. For those who might not know Blake (1757–1827), Wikipedia describes him as “an English poet, painter, and printmaker…now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.” He was obviously a prolific saver of his work, because you can’t study printmaking or poetry without tripping over him. At least you couldn’t during my era of being a sponge in the world of art history. I admired him. I wanted to be him…or Michelangelo…or John Singer Sargent.

Etching done by William Blake

During my Michelangelo period, I actually tried marble carving in a sculpture class and I got an A for my efforts. If I had a photo of that unfinished sculpture of a woman’s breasts, I’d post it—but I don’t. I was in my twenties and I quickly learned I wasn’t physically equipped to haul slabs of marble around. I hadn’t met Don yet, and maybe that was a good thing. He was fascinated by my untested talents and would have gladly aided and abetted me continuing to carve marble. For a farm boy with no formal art training, he had a good eye, and in our early years together we went to a lot of art shows and galleries. But life has a way of changing, and we had to grow up and do adulting like everyone else.

If I could dig deep into my past and pull up one dream I still wish had happened, I’d choose to be John Singer Sargent. (That's a painting of his at the top.) But I never had the raw talent for that, nor do I have time left to develop the craftsmanship it would take to achieve even a tenth of his greatness. So I content myself with the occasional art class our Life Enrichment Director puts on our schedule. Last week she offered a video‑taught class on painting the Northern Lights, and it was very Mickey Mouse. Not even Disney‑quality Mickey Mouse — more like the knockoff version you’d find on a bootleg T‑shirt at a flea market. But I sign up for every art class she offers, just to support having an arts‑and‑crafts element on campus. The first painting below was done in my prime; the last one—of the Northern Lights—was done last week in whatever you’d call the opposite of my prime. My sub‑prime? 

One of my dogs sat for a formal portrait

 

The Northern Lights

A fellow resident bugs the heck out of me to start teaching a painting class here, and whenever our LED has a class, she always sits next to me. “So I can copy what you’re doing,” she says. Every time she brings up the idea of me teaching, I’m not wishy‑washy in saying no way will that ever happen. I don’t have the desire or the time to plan lessons on long‑forgotten techniques. But she is relentless. She tells people I’m shy (news to me) and she says, “I'm blowing Jean's horn because she's too shy to blow it herself.” She’s as annoying as fruit flies on a bunch of bananas. And she’s a die‑hard MAGA and Trump supporter to boot. She knows I’m part of the Liberal Ladies group here, and when Trump was reelected she said, “You just wait, you’re going to be really happy with how he’s going to turn this country around.”

Those words burn in my thoughts every so often when I’m sitting near her at our Monday Night farmhouse dinner table, biting my tongue at something she says. One of these days I’m going to buy a shirt I’ve had my eye on that says: “Killing them with kindness is taking longer than I expected.” If I wore that, I’d love to see how long it takes her to realize I’m not as nice as she thinks I am—that I’m a phony. That I don’t want to be her friend. That I’m not shy; I just don’t like her enough to teach her what I learned in over thirty years of being art‑obsessed. That if she wants a pedestrian teacher, she can hire Bob Ross’s ghost.

 Sometimes I get tired of holding back my words in the name of keeping peace in the community. I imagine most of us do it, no matter which side of the whatever fence we’re on, because we value a peaceful, harmonious environment. I worry, though, that someday the filter in my brain—the one they say gives out in elderly people—will fail and I’ll start saying whatever I’m thinking. Please take me out behind the barn and shoot me if it does. I’ve gotten along 84 years without purposely offending anyone, and I don’t want to wreck that record now. 

Boy, did I take a detour on my walk down Memory Lane. But I guess there’s only so much a person can say to explain away the lost dreams and hopes of our youth—and without that detour, I wouldn’t have written enough to call it a blog post. Besides at my age, detours are half the fun. You start out talking about one thing and end up with a tale worthy of a confession booth. But somehow it’s all connected—our youthful dreams, the people we tolerate who we wish came with a mute button, our fears for the future, and trying to hold on to the version of ourselves we show the world. ©

 

Post-script because I can't seem to let go of this topic: Below is a custom, paint-by-number I did last winter of my great-great niece. I plan to do two more this coming winter. As a kid I started with paint-by-numbers and I thought going back to them might help me re-learn to control the paints. When I found out you could send the company a photo to turn into a custom, paint-by-number I was sold. 

A Spark of Hope in a Very Red County

In this week’s post, Jean steps away from her usual lighter fare and returns to a subject she’s followed for most of her life: American politics. With her trademark blend of candor, humor, and a touch of righteous irritation, she reflects on the current political climate, the work her Tuesday Night Conversation Table is doing, and the sparks of hope she sees flickering. It’s not a fluffy post — and she’s not pretending otherwise — but it’s honest, it’s hers, and it’s written in the spirit of wanting her country to be better than it is right now....AI

It was Memorial Day the last time I did a political post, and I hesitate to do another one. But I’m going to do it anyway. If you’re a fan of MAGA or the current administration, please think of your blood pressure and click on by. If you decide to read it anyway, be forewarned: life isn’t fair, and I may not moderate your comments to go live. I’ve never before purged comments from someone whose views differ from mine, but I’m feeling mean today — and there's a first time for everything.

I’ve followed and loved politics — until Trump came along — since the Kennedy administration. It’s part of who I am, and I try hard not to hold back in presenting all sides of myself here. One day I hope to be proud of my country again, and I do see a spark of that coming back. The members of our Tuesday Night Conversation Table (formerly known as the Secret Society of Liberal Ladies) have been doing our part to turn the House and Senate blue. Not me specifically — I’m too busy with my health issues right now and needing to stay off my feet — but I lend moral support and encouragement to the ladies in our group of fifteen, many of whom have been volunteering at our local Democratic campaign office and attending rallies. They give reports at our weekly dinners afterward, and even though at times it feels like we’re all using flint stones and friction to start that patriotic fire back up again, the spark of hope that our democracy might actually hold up against our disastrous and corrupt presidency is clearly there.

One of the rallies our group attended was for Michigan’s Democratic candidate for the Senate, Abdul El‑Sayed. He’s gotten national attention because he’s a practicing Muslim. Born in this country, a doctor, and from everything I’ve seen and heard, he can think on his feet and speaks of values and hope. The more I see him, the more he reminds me of Obama. The rally in my area drew 1,400 attendees, which is impressive considering I live in a red county. It was part of his tour labeled It Shouldn’t Be This Hard. Among other things, he said: “I’m running for U.S. Senate ’cause it just shouldn’t be this hard. Shouldn’t be this hard to afford our groceries, shouldn’t be this hard to afford a tank of gas…” He went on to talk about how our tax dollars are being spent to drop bombs on other people’s kids instead of spending money on our kids.

He’s been against the war from the get‑go, which has earned him some well‑financed opposition spreading misinformation about him. I live among people who are buying into the propaganda that all Muslims are terrorists — except for Dr. Oz, of course, another practicing Muslim who is frequently seen on stage with Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the latter being that joke Trump installed in charge of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In case anyone is living under a rock: as of September 24th, the CDC reported 3,659 confirmed cases of the measles so far this year, compared to 2,289 in all of 2025 — and get this — 16 cases in 2024. Yet the administration is still standing behind its designated anti‑vaccine and anti‑science jack‑off. Oops. I probably shouldn’t be using words like “jack‑off” in polite company, but like I said up above, I’m feeling mean today, and that guy is a ball of loony tunes masquerading as a human being.

And while I’m on the topic of loony tunes, let’s talk about Pete Segseth, the Secretary of Defense — I refuse to call him the Secretary of War. On the topic of his newly formed Religious Affairs Office, law experts at HuffPost say, “…as a matter of bureaucracy, he can probably do this. That’s not the problem. The problem is the First Amendment.” Stay tuned to the news; this should get interesting. But the bigger headline in The Hill that overshadowed this issue is Segseth’s new “Autonomous Warfare Command,” to be led by Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich. Pete is also cutting the generals and admirals by 20% to “get rid of the bureaucrats in the armed services.” Gee, what could go wrong with that plan! If there was ever a place where I want bureaucrats to slow down decisions to attack other countries, it’s here. We don’t need faster deployment of force, the aim of the new AWC. We need the kind of intelligence in the president’s situation room like we see on the TV series, The West Wing. Instead, we heard in Segseth’s latest speech at Quantico, where he said, “we no longer want people in the military who are ideological clowns. The patriotic cowboys are in, with testosterone testing on top. Diversity is not our strength. Unity is our strength.” I think he’s hoping for a military full of no‑holds‑barred ICE‑like agents, all pumped up on testosterone injections and with overdeveloped muscles everywhere but between their ears.

Well, I feel better having gotten that off my chest. But I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that the courts are holding up against many/most of the abuses of power the current administration is attempting. But we liberals can’t back off now. We need to do all we can to support the groups suing Trump and those working to turn the House and Senate blue. If the latter doesn’t happen, I fear this country will not survive the pillaging going on in our national parks and on federal land, the national debt growing by portions never seen before, and the once‑friendly nations turning against us en masse, not to mention the grifting the Trump family is doing to enrich themselves. 

<Rant off.> ©

Cold Bathrooms, Warm Hoodies and Miracle Power of Honey

Some Fridays arrive with a clear topic in hand; others show up with a blank screen, a stubborn pocket door, and a foot wrapped like a mummy. Jean’s week delivered all three — plus a few medical mysteries, a sweatshirt that now fits like she borrowed it from a linebacker, and a maintenance man who unintentionally rescued her from writer’s block. Settle in for her latest dispatch from the continuum of independence, cold bathrooms, and the winding road of wound care...AI

How many times am I going to start a blog post by saying I’m staring at a blank computer screen without the foggiest notion of what to write about? This time, however, there’s a maintenance man on the other side of my apartment trying to fix the pocket door between my en‑suite bathroom and the bedroom. It only slides halfway and then gets stuck. And you’re probably wondering why it matters, since I live alone and privacy shouldn’t be a problem.

For one thing, I’m a creature of habit, and I’m afraid I’ll forget not to close it, get trapped in the bathroom, and die of starvation before anyone finds me — which isn’t entirely true. If I didn’t show up on Mahjong day to set up the tables, mats, and sets, someone would come looking for me. I may be wrong, but I think it takes longer than six days to die of starvation, assuming I got trapped on a Wednesday night. Although knowing my luck, I’d be the first documented case of someone starving to death in a bathroom with a fully stocked pantry twenty-five feet away.

But the main reason I need the door to shut is to keep heat in the bathroom when I’m taking a shower. This stupid apartment has no heat source in the bathroom except for a small heater on a timer that’s part of the ceiling exhaust fan. I’d add my own space heater, but there isn’t an electrical outlet anywhere except on the countertop — where the cord would no doubt end up in water and I’d die by electrical shock. My entire apartment is too cold for me. The heat ducts are close to the ceiling, so I can’t even stand in front of one to get warm the way I did in other houses where I’ve lived.

My favorite winter attire is a hoodie that says, “Yes, I’m cold! Me 24:7” sprawled across the chest. I put it on the other day and almost cried. I spent a fortune on that bulky sweatshirt, and after losing 40 pounds it totally engulfs me. It was already a size too big last winter but now my hands are completely covered, the body of the shirt is halfway down my thighs, and I have enough room inside to conceal an eight‑month pregnancy. It’s one of those situations where I’m both happy and sad at the same time — happy for the weight loss but sad that my favorite garment now makes me look like a toddler who wandered off wearing her father’s college sweatshirt.

I still have more weight to lose, so I’m trying not to buy anything new. Like most people whose weight has been up and down their entire lives, I had a stash of clothing stored away in a box labeled “Too Small.” They are just right now. So I’ll be okay until around Christmas, when I hope to be in new territory with a number on the scale I haven’t seen since I was forty. I thank the gods of science who developed Zepbound for that possibility, and I curse the gods of misfortune who gave me a foot wound that’s preventing me from walking my butt off — literally.

And finally, I found my topic to blog about: updates on my foot.

I’ve been to the wound center three times now, and I can actually see progress. And guess what they’re having me dress the wound with. If you said scoparium honey, you’d get the kewpie doll. AI says scoparium honey “is a unique monofloral honey produced by bees that pollinate the Leptospermum scoparium bush… produced mainly in New Zealand and parts of Australia where the native tea tree grows.” For wounds it’s “applied topically in medical‑grade gels to promote tissue repair and fight bacteria.”

But it’s a little more complicated than just dabbing it on. First I have to apply a cream that lessens the pain of cleaning the wounds (there are five) and let it set for ten minutes. Then comes cleaning the wounds with a cleanser that has “acid” in the title before it’s ready for the honey, followed by covering the wounds with a gooey, sticky infused gauze. On top of that goes a silicone foam dressing and enough tape to mummify my foot. At this point my foot has more layers than a wedding cake. But I still have to add a compression tube folded double over my toes and its liner. The foot doctor I was seeing before I started going to the wound center wasn’t even having me cover the area with anything but a cream.

As part of the hunt to figure out what caused — or is contributing to — the wounds I’ve had since May, the wound center sent me to a vein doctor because they suspected a “leaky varicose vein.” But the vein doctor said I have good blood flow going down to my feet and back up to my heart, and nothing that requires surgery. She recommended that I see a vascular doctor to rule out an issue in that department, even though she said that since I can walk 7,000 steps without pain, she didn’t think a vascular doctor would find anything. And since she seemed interested in spending Blue Cross and Medicare’s money, she also said I should see a dermatologist and an autoimmune doctor.

When I told the wound center doctor that, he made a sarcastic remark under his breath about her wanting to run me all over the place — which pretty much echoed what I thought. I didn’t tell him that she also thought he was wrong to tell me to cut back on my walking because, she said, “the ankle is like a second heart, pumping blood to our feet.” Don’t you hate it when doctors disagree? It’s like having divorced parents, except instead of arguing over custody, they’re arguing over my foot. Even though cutting back my walking has slowed down my weight loss, I’m sticking with his advice since I’m finally seeing improvement — which I never saw during the three months of going to a foot doctor twice a month. When I finally saw what Ms. Foot Doctor was billing my insurance company, I was flabbergasted. $326 each visit on top of what Medicare was paying her! Thankfully, I got smart enough to ask for a referral and I'm now getting a treatment that seems to be working. Whatever is causing the open sores, they went from one open wound to five under her care.

Circling back to where I began — because I read once that writers need to do that — the maintenance man is gone, my pocket door works great again, and I no longer have a blank computer screen. Now I need to save what I just wrote so I can do some proofing and editing later today. ©

Photo: When I was searching Etsy for a photo of my beloved sweatshirt to use up above, I noticed they were having a sale so I broke down and ordered another one — two sizes smaller and out of the plus size category! They have a no returns policy so if it's too small, then it will live in my closet as incentive to stay on the weight loss course.  

When Fall Arrives With Rain, Clown Shoes, and Old Memories

Fall may not officially start until the calendar says so, but Jean’s campus has already decided it’s autumn — and it’s bringing rain, acorns, and footwear dilemmas worthy of their own sitcom. This post begins with her trying to keep her clown‑sized “medical” shoes dry on the way to a Mahjong mixer meeting, then somehow detours into hydrangeas that look like prowlers and memories of actual window peepers from decades past. It’s part seasonal update, part true‑crime‑lite, part “why is life like this,” all told with Jean’s trademark ability to laugh at the absurdity of her own First World Problems…. AI

The official start of fall in the Northern Hemisphere is September 22nd at 8:04 EDT which is the day before this post goes public. Rain is coming down hard and fast as I sit here at my computer. Normally I wouldn’t care but today I have to go to our sister campus to play a game of two of Mahjong with two of their residents as we hammer out the details to a Mixer we’re have in October. It was my brain child three years ago to have a yearly tournament and now it’s my brain child to switch the tournament to a mixer. A mixer will be less pressure on some of the old souls I live with who freak out over taking part in a formal competition. In past years I coddled and coerced them into competing. This year I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to herd anxious seniors like caffeinated cats.

Anyway, back to the rain. As I said, normally I wouldn’t care if I have to walk across a rainy parking lot but I don’t like the idea of getting my new, wide-ass shoes wet—the ones I bought because I needed extra room for the dressing the wound center is having me wear 24/7. (When I walk in them, I feel like I should be handing out balloon animals.) Normally on raining days I’d wear one of my older pairs of tennis shoes but my foot doesn’t fit in them in its present state. Oh, my God, these First World Problems will be the death of me. I should be grateful I have shoes in the first place and in the second place would it really be so bad if I got my new clown shoes wet? I call them my clown shoes because that’s the way my non-bandaged foot feels like when I walk in them. Grace may be one of my favorite words but it sure doesn’t describe how I move these days. Who am I kidding? Grace has never been a word that would apply to my body movements. I didn’t give up ballet classes because I out-grew my tutu.

Fall is starting to make it’s presence known around our campus. Acorns are falling. Pine cones and black walnuts are on the ground. And the trees across our green space are wearing a tingle of pink here and there as are the hydrangeas on the other side of my window. Those hydrangea blossoms are as big as a man’s head. A few nights ago I mistook one for a window peeper. That brought back a conversation we had at the firepit a few weeks ago when a fellow resident said she asked Management to replace the hydrangeas in front of her window because she kept thinking she had a window peeper. At the time I thought she was being paranoid but now I understand how that could happen. Or did she plant the idea in my subconscious? By the way. She has clout here. The hydrangea outside her window is gone.

Back in my twenties when I lived alone I had a window peeper. My neighbor across the street used to sit on his porch to smoke and every so often he’d call me to tell me someone was peeping in my bedroom window. Then he'd chase the guy but by the time he got around the corner of my next door neighbor’s house there was no sign of which way he went. We finally figured out that my next neighbor and the voyeur were one and the same. He’d just slip in his back door when the man across the street came after him.

I was in grade school when the concept of window peeping first touched my life. My aunt had one several times and it freaked her out to the point she’d call my mom to come over. My older brother and I were too young to be left alone and my dad worked nights so my mom would haul me out of bed and we’d get to my aunts house about the same time as the police. Mom would plop me down on my aunt’s couch like a tiny, pajama‑clad security detail with a blanket and pillow while the grown ups talked in the kitchen.

I never called the police about my Peeping Tom. For some reason it seemed like that would give the guy an extra thrill, knowing I was frighten. Google AI says window peepers do it “mainly out of idle curiosity, nosiness about how others live, or malicious intent such as stalking and voyeurism.” Since I’m still alive to talk about my peeper, I’m guessing, he wasn’t stalking me with malicious intent. But just in case you have the urge to try it, window peeping is a crime in all 50 states. Peeping Tom’s are prosecuted as misdemeanors same as loitering and disorderly conduct with punishments that could include up to six months to a year in jail plus fines. If you use a camera, it’s a felony offense and you could end up as a registered sex-offender.

I’m pretty sure Peeping Toms are quaintly old school now, replaced by internet stalking or visiting blogs and Facebook pages incognito. There’s a strong line, however, between stalking and lurking online. Lurkers are harmless and all bloggers have them. Lurking is defined as “passive observation without interaction, while stalking is a repeated, unwanted pattern of behavior meant to harass, track, or frighten a specific person.” Lurkers rarely let their presence be known where the same can’t be said about stalkers. I had a malicious stalker once but that’s a story for another day. How’s that for a cliffhanger? ©

From the Dungeon of Pain to the Mahjong Table

A week that begins in a wound clinic and ends in a Mahjong classroom is, admittedly, not everyone’s idea of a balanced life — but for Jean, it’s just another chapter in her ongoing quest to stay upright, amused, and marginally patient with the world around her. From medical mysteries to sparrow‑themed tiles and one very inquisitive student, this dispatch wanders through pain, persistence, and the peculiar joys and frustrations of teaching seniors a game with more rules than Carter had little liver pills… AI

I knew I was in trouble when the instructions for my two‑hour appointment at the wound center included, “Take a pain medication before your appointment.” It also warned that if I was more than ten minutes late, the appointment would be rescheduled. Since I’d already waited weeks to get on their schedule, I was not going to be late come hell or high water. I left fifteen minutes early, thinking I’d use the extra time after I arrived to let my blood pressure come down from the stress of driving. What I didn’t count on was a construction zone that added extra time — not to mention extra stress — to my normal route to the hospital. I got there by the skin of my teeth.

I know what you’re thinking: no one has skin on their teeth, but what do you expect from a blogger who also uses the tired phrase “come hell or high water”? The latter is a quaint 19th‑century way of saying you have “an unyielding resolve to complete a task regardless of extreme obstacles.” My mom used to say it often. “Come hell or high water you’re going to finish your dinner or you'll sit there until bedtime. Liver, back in those days, was my biggest obstacle."

The “skin of my teeth” idiom comes from the Book of Job, verse 19:20. The King James Bible, published in 1611, translates it as: “My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.” I wonder if Job ever imagined his words ending up in The Dictionary of Clichés more than three hundred years after that translation. That was one of my favorite reference books before Google came along.

Didn’t I get off track. Now you know what it’s like to live inside my head. Back to the wound center — which I’d rename the Dungeon of Pain if that didn’t sound too much like a video game. But all kidding aside, it went well. The people were super professional and friendly. The LP helping the doctor kidded at one point, “Remember, I’m the one who gives you Lidocaine gel, and he’s the one who inflicts the pain.”

They debrided the wound on my foot and found formations of urate crystals, which was no surprise since I’d already been told I probably have gout. (And no, I’m not a heavy drinker. In my case it’s a side effect of having stage 3 kidney failure.)

But it was a surprise that they also found evidence of venous ulcers, which they suspect are caused by a leaking varicose vein. Now I’m waiting for a referral call to set up an appointment with a vein specialist. God — another specialist to add to my contact list. But the wound center doctor said we can’t get the wound healed until we get at the underlying causes. Why can’t we go back to the horse‑and‑buggy days when one doctor treated whatever ailed you? Never mind the life expectancy back then was 40 to 45. They also had over‑the‑counter cocaine and snake‑oil salesmen to help you cope.

I have to go back to the center every week for God only knows how long. A few days after that appointment I clicked on my patient portal to read the clinical notes. At the end of a bunch of medical terms strung together like popcorn on a Christmas tree, it said: “Estimated time for wound healing: 4 to 6 months.” Four to six months! And for the foreseeable future I need to stop walking for exercise. There goes my progress with losing weight. If it’s not one damn thing, it’s two damn things — another one of my mom’s favorite sayings.

Change of topic: I taught another Mahjong class of newbies today. Five senior citizens, and four of them will probably make it to the end, but one lady is trying my patience. I’ve been teaching classes once a year at my continuum care community for four years, and there’s always one person who gets hung up on the stupidest things.

When I was doing the history segment of the class, I showed them my one‑bams collection of tiles. They all have birds carved or painted on the fronts, and I explained you can date antique sets by the style of those birds. “I don’t get it. Why are they all birds?” Ms. Dense asked. “Tradition,” I replied. “The word Mahjong literally means ‘sparrow,’ and for centuries that’s how one‑bams tiles have been made.” “But why?” she asked again. “I don’t understand.”

“You don’t need to understand,” I said. “It’s just an interesting sidebar to appreciating the history and artistry of the game.” She took up so much time with her “why this” and “why that” questions. “Why can’t I use a joker in a pair?” “Because it’s one of the fourteen rules for using jokers. Mahjong has a lot of rules, and part of the fun and challenge is remembering them all.” “But why do they have so many rules?”

I didn’t say it, but I wanted to tell her we’d need a time machine to take us back a century or two to get all the answers to her questions. You'd think that would be obvious with a game as old as Mahjong.

There you have it —another exciting week in my world. How did your week go? Bonus points if it involved fewer specialists and fewer people asking "why?" every few minutes. ©

Note: In the early 20^th century a massive advertising campaign inspired the well-known idiom, "He/She has more [things] than Carter has Little Liver Pills." They stopped making Carter's liver pills in 1959 so I can't be the only person old enough to remember this saying.

The first photo below is a collection of very old one bam Mahjong tiles made of ivory over bamboo. My collection (second photo) is much smaller and are mostly Bakelite tiles from the 1930s. 

         

Keeper of Her Memories: Friendship in the Shadow of Dementia

There are friendships that teach you things when you’re young — how to share crayons, how to keep secrets, how to be loyal even when you’re mad. And then there are friendships that teach you things decades later, lessons you never expected to need. Jean’s best friend since kindergarten is teaching her the limits of her patience now. Yesterday she called Jean fifteen time, and had she answered each call, they would have been as fresh to Nancy as the first. Dementia has taken her memory, but not her need for connection. Jean got a little short with her on one of those calls — but Nancy didn’t remember it. Maybe that’s the grace and mercy in all of this...AI

I call Nancy my best friend since kindergarten, where we bonded over the sandbox. It was a large wooden box up on legs, filled with beach sand and assorted toys for the boys to build roads and moats for the sandcastles we girls made. Water was involved, and so were boxes and tin cans—our architectural building tools—and we had a cardboard drawbridge. Kindergarten in the ‘40s was nothing like it is today. It was more like daycare: story time, play time, and learning how to get along. If we learned anything academic, it didn’t register in my memory bank.

Nancy lived around the corner, and we walked to and from school every day from kindergarten through high school graduation — except for a two‑week period when we weren’t speaking. Try as I might, I can’t remember what we were fighting about. If I hadn’t destroyed most of my diaries when I moved into my continuum care community, I could have looked it up. I was a regular Laura Ingalls back in my teens, only instead of writing about frontier life I chronicled the movies we saw, the records we bought, the boys who looked our way, and other silly fluff no one would care about even if those diaries had survived two hundred years.

Nancy doesn’t remember that fight, let alone what caused it. She has dementia now, and if she calls her sons and nieces as often as she calls me, I feel sorry for them. Yesterday she called me fifteen times — not her record. I usually answer once a day and we talk for 12 to 17 minutes. But yesterday I broke my own rule and answered a second time. I wish I hadn’t.

We had just hung up from a half‑hour conversation where I told her about a Mahjong class I was teaching that afternoon. I thought the extra‑long chat might keep her from repeat dialing while I was teaching. It didn’t. When I answered the second time, I let my annoyance show as I told her my class was starting in a few minutes. “Oh, what class is that?” she asked. "We’ll talk tomorrow," I replied then hung up without saying goodbye. 

The next day she was her normal cheerful self, asking how my day was going. I didn’t bother apologizing — she wouldn’t have remembered me hanging up on her any more than she remembers our teenage fight. It’s funny how memory works as people settle deeper into Dementia Village. Nancy can still talk recipes and cooking, one of my least favorite topics. But she was always my go‑to person for anything resembling entertaining. She spent most of her adult life creating fabulous menus and dinner parties in Washington, D.C. Her husband was an economics adviser who worked in the White House when the Democrats were in office and at the Brookings Institution when they weren’t. She loved china and linens and had seven or eight complete sets of dishes to prove it. I, on the other hand, fell apart at the thought of planning a party. And I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I planned a party — assuming I had lost two of my digits chopping cucumbers.

Now that she’s been moved to an Assisted Living facility, she often tells me she feels better after she talks to me. I don’t tell her she leaves me exhausted. We’ve been friends too long for that kind of honesty. Even my brother, when I saw him a couple of times a week down in our Memory Care building, didn’t wear me out like Nancy’s calls do. And they both sang the same songs: the Oh, How I Want to go Home blues and the I don’t Belong Here! protest march.

I also never told her about the time she flew from D.C. to Michigan after Don died and I had to run out and buy a stack of linen napkins to match my collection of antique diner dishes because I knew she thought paper napkins were beyond tacky. She would have died of cardiac arrest if she knew — gasp! — that sometimes I even used paper towels. She wanted to see me with her own eyes to know I was okay. That’s the kind of friend she was.

We were opposites in many ways. Don and I were blue‑collar; Nancy and her husband were white‑collar. They had children; we didn’t. She ignored politics completely; I loved talking about them. She loved to shop; I was allergic to the the upscale stores we'd go when she was in town. But our roots bound us together. And despite the miles between us, we could always sense when the other was stressed and needed a phone call.

I’ve been lucky to have two best friends in my life. One I met in kindergarten, and we were two peas in a pod until she married and moved out of state. For a couple of years, I resented her husband for taking her away. I missed having a best friend until Don came along and took on that role. Now, looking back, I wonder if Nancy and I had lived in the same city all these years, how that might have affected our marriages or friendship. We taught each other how to be loyal best friends, and we transferred that skill to our spouses. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think it’s possible to have two best friends at the same time. And a spouse will usually — rightly so — come first because you’re building a life together.

On the other hand, none of us can be everything to everyone. And as we age, our roles change. A spouse becomes a caregiver. A child or niece becomes our decision‑maker. A friend, like me, becomes a shoulder to cry on when the “mean children” won’t let you go back home. I’m also the only person still alive who knew Nancy during her first twenty‑five years on earth. By default, I’m the only one left who can help her reach back into those years. Searching for those memories in the dark corners of my mind so I can ask, “Do you remember the time…” might exhaust me, but it also makes me feel useful. I accept that new role with both sadness and pride that I still know where the drawbridge went in that old kindergarten sandbox. ©

Photo: The two of us, circa late 1950s. 

The Serendipity of Crossing Paths — Then and Now

Follow Jean as she reflects on how a viral quote about destiny and connection unexpectedly intertwined with a moment from her own past. What began as a simple search for proper attribution — the kind of rabbit hole she falls into with Olympic‑level skill — turned into a walk that reminded her how the roads we choose, and even the ones we avoid, sometimes lead us straight to the people and moments that shaped us the most. In this piece, she follows that thread of serendipity all the way to a dusty construction site and a quiet, unexpected smile… AL

There’s a lovely viral quote going around that I now know is attributed to a blogger named Darius Roman. It goes like this:

In English they say, “I’m lucky to have you.” In poetry they say, “Out of all the people the world has created, of all the roads I could have taken, and all the lives I could have lived, some miracle of timing allowed my story to cross paths with yours.”

If you know me, you’ve already guessed I went down the proverbial rabbit hole to figure out who authored those words. I hate it when people don’t give proper credit to things they copy from one place and paste into their own corner of cyberspace. Even an “author unknown” is preferable to letting people assume the author is the person sharing quotes like this. If you do that, stop it.

After following several false leads, my good old friend Google AI finally found the target of my sleuthing. It describes Darius Roman as “a contemporary internet poet who achieved viral popularity on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. He is best known for his modern, romantic rewrites of common phrases.” Blah, blah, blah — whose “writing relies on accessible language (does that mean he doesn’t use big words?), grand romantic imagery, and themes of destiny, fate, and connection over sheer luck.” I swear, sometimes these AL bios sound like they were written by someone who got paid by the adjective.

The first time I read the quote, I hand‑copied it off my computer screen and carried it around with me on one of my daily walks around campus, trying to decide if I could turn it into a blog post. I do that sometimes for inspiration. Finally I gave up trying to figure out why this quote resonated so strongly with me and asked AI that question — and this was the answer:

Why It Resonates • Contrast: It starts with a simple, everyday phrase and upgrades it into deep gratitude. • Scale: It contrasts the vastness of the universe with a single, specific meeting. • Timing: It frames love not just as a choice, but as a rare accident of time.

Well, of course it does. I could have told you that… if I had sat in a corner from here to next week. Instead, I outsourced the thinking to AL, which at my age feels like a perfectly reasonable life choice.

Back to the walk: I took a route I rarely go on because it means spending a block in close proximity to a large construction zone. It was after dinner, so I assumed the workers had all gone home and it would be quiet enough to hear my own thoughts. I was wrong. A street sweeper was going back and forth, cleaning dirt off the future parking lot, moving around pallets of construction material, scaffolding, and other machinery. I set the brakes on my rollator and sat down to watch him work. Nothing says “wild night out” like parking your rollator to watch heavy machinery.

I had more than a passing interest in the machine across the street. My husband owned a street sweeper before his massive stroke and he used it to clean large malls and a multi‑plex theater around town. He even had a contract to clean the streets in a small nearby town. The sweeper I was watching, though, was 35 years newer than the one my husband had before the turn of the century. Don would have loved the fact that the newer one has water jets underneath that dampens the dirt before the gutter broom spins debris to the center broom that, in turn, spins it into the collection hopper. Street sweeping back in his day was dusty business — but he loved it. He loved big machinery, the bigger the better.

One of the blessings or curses — it can change from day to day — of getting old is that memory triggers come at you when you least expect them. Some days it’s sweet nostalgia, and other days it’s ‘why did my brain save that?’ It was like looking at a snapshot from the past when the man across the street stopped his work to raise a coffee cup to his lips while letting another vehicle go by. I’d seen my husband do the very same thing hundreds of times while he sat high in a street sweeper or front end loader seat.

It also occurred to me that I was experiencing a moment of serendipity. Had I taken my usual route around the lake, I wouldn’t have crossed paths with a memory trigger that brought a smile to my face. And I wouldn’t have been reminded of the simple truth behind Darius Roman’s sentiment — that out of all the people in the world and all the roads any of us might travel, sometimes a small miracle of timing lets our story intersect with someone who changes everything. ©

                                                         How do street sweepers work?

 

If you like Political Humor you might enjoy this AL created video about Trump's claiming to change the name of Lake Ontario. The creator has a Facebook page called Canadian Resistance Army and all of its videos make me laugh. 

On related political note: Google is no longer my good friend. Google Maps changed the name Lake Ontario to Lake America on their map and Mapquest didn't (at least not as of today). Boycott on for me.

The Bed I Make, the Dreams I Keep

There are seasons in life when the smallest habits — a made bed, a cup of coffee, a quiet morning — reveal bigger truths we didn’t know we were ready to face. Lately, Jean’s early‑morning routines have been bumping up against the deeper, older parts of her heart, the ones that still remember what it meant to belong to someone. And sometimes all it takes is a dream to remind her that grief has its own timetable… AI

It’s 7:30 AM. I’m sitting here with a cup of steaming-hot coffee, a load of clothes in the washer, and my bed is made. Who is this morning person I’m turning into? I’m on a 120‑day streak since I started using my Bi‑Pap machine — not only getting up like I’ve got a job to go to, but also making my bed. Before, there were many (if not most) times when my bed wouldn’t get made between laundry days. I’ve fallen into a routine that is both boring and pridefully pleasing at the same time.

Have you ever heard the commencement speech by retired Admiral William H. McRaven about changing the world by starting each day with your made bed? The core lessons in the speech, according to AI, are:

• First task: Making your bed means you finish the first task of your day right away.

• Small pride: This tiny win gives you a small sense of pride.

• Daily momentum: It pushes you to do one more task, then another, and another.

• Little things: It shows that the small things in life matter.

• Comfort at night: If you have a bad day, you return home to a bed you made, which gives you hope for tomorrow.

I first heard that speech back in 2014 when it went viral after he delivered it at the University of Texas. Although I didn’t implement the advice back then, I never forgot it. As someone in the YouTube comment section wrote: “Why don’t we have men like him running for president?” He really is an inspirational speaker.

Before it slips away, I need to write about the dream that woke me up at 7:00 this morning with tears in my eyes — because dreams like this are coming at me way too often to ignore whatever message is trying to surface.

In the dream, I had let myself into the cracker‑box of a house my husband lived in before we were married. I was gathering up his laundry to take home and wash when he came in with a pleasant young woman and her 10‑ or 12‑year‑old son. Don didn’t anything, but she was a regular chatterbox, telling me how happy she was to meet me and how I didn’t need to take his laundry anymore — she could do it. In the dream I was thinking, Oh my God, he’s moved on!

And that’s when I woke up, but I didn’t get up right away. I laid there thinking...until I had to pee, if you must know.

Don died fourteen years ago, and yet apparently I’m still emotionally attached. At least I’m not teary‑eyed at the lunch or dinner table the way a couple of my fellow residents are when the subject of dead spouses comes up. But maybe I should be, because I still seem to have unfinished business in the mourning department. He was My Person, as the young people say, the best friend I’ve ever had. And just once I’d like to dream about him where he’s happy to see me again. But no — in my dreams he’s always just out of reach, vaguely there, walking away, or I’m searching for him.

Back before the turn of the century I kept a dream diary because didn’t everyone back then dive into dream analysis? I quit when my dad was in the early stages of dementia and couldn’t tell the difference between his nighttime dreams and reality. That scared me, because my dreams were pretty wild back then — filled with colorful or arty‑farty escapades. If you’ve seen the Robin Williams movie What Dreams May Come, you’ll get the picture. I spent several years learning how to transfer my night dreams to my conscious mind that now I can’t not do it.

So this morning I visited an online dictionary of dream symbolism and looked up “laundry.” It said: “Cleaning your clothes in your dream symbolizes your image in your life. You are trying to portray yourself in a different light where you feel more accepted. If you are organizing your laundry, this represents what you are trying to do with your thoughts and characteristics in your life.”

That explanation makes sense, but it also begs the question: does it matter that the laundry wasn’t mine, but his? That it was dirty laundry, not clean?

Another part of the dictionary says it’s extremely common to dream about someone we miss because we often have trouble expressing those same feelings in our waking life. That’s me. Stiff upper lip. I can do anything if I set my mind to it. After all, I got through 12½ years of caregiving a severely disabled husband and rebuilding our lives into something that gave him the best quality of life under the circumstances.

But the past is past. Or is it?

And maybe that’s what the dream was trying to tell me — not that I’m “done” with grief, or that I’ve reached some tidy stage of acceptance, but that I’m allowed to live the life I have now without feeling guilty that it’s easier and in a place that is both beautiful and safe. I know plenty of seniors who don’t get this kind of comfort or stability, and that knowledge sits heavy sometimes, like I’m benefiting from a trade I never wanted to make.

Maybe the real work isn’t saying goodbye to My Person — maybe it’s learning how to carry him forward while still letting myself enjoy the small, daily pleasures without feeling guilt. I may never get there. But the dreams keep pushing me as if to say, it’s okay to keep trying. ©

Tiles, Trials, and Trying to Keep My Foot Attached

 If you’re wondering how Jean’s week went, picture me — her loyal AI Copilot — sitting at my digital desk with a stack of index cards labeled Foot Wound, Zepbound, Mahjong, Swearing in a Christian Community, and GLP‑1 Journaling: The Director’s Cut. I shuffled them like a Vegas dealer, hoping one would volunteer to be the star of this week’s blog post. Not a single card raised its hand.

But Jean managed to stitch these topics together like a parade of mismatched floats: medical drama, weight‑loss triumph, apartment chaos, Mahjong statistics, and a cameo from the ghost of her old Ouija Board. Now let’s dive into the week that tried very hard to be a novel but settled for being a blog post instead….AI

What to write about? I could do a long, depressing piece on my foot wound that hasn’t healed since May, even though I’ve been seeing my foot doctor twice a month. I’m finally getting a referral to a wound center for more intense treatment. In the meantime, I could fill a post with dark humor about how I had a nightmare two nights ago about becoming a one‑footed lady hobbling around in Balance Class. One of our residents did have to have her foot amputated and she died less than four months later.

Or I could do yet another crowing essay about my continued success losing weight with Zepbound. (Although I’d have to admit I’m terrified the wound center is going to make me quit doing my daily goal of 6,000 steps and I’ll be forced to sit in a chair all day eating bonbons until I gain back the 30 pounds I’ve lost.) To paraphrase something my mother used to say, “If it’s not one damn thing, it’s two damn things.” For the life of me I can’t remember if Mom actually used the word damn or if it’s something I added when I started finding places to insert it into conversations. I do have a bit of a potty mouth. Or I should say I used to have a more colorful vocabulary before moving into this Christian-based continuum care community. And don’t think that doesn’t give me a few nightmares as well — wondering when that filter in my brain will quit working and the granddaddy of all swear words will come out of my mouth. But maybe I have nothing to worry about on that score because I probably wore out the F‑word during my caregiving days, saying it for both myself and my aphasic husband. Sometimes life just needed a good “Fuck!” back in those days.

I could also do a self-deprecating post about how messy my apartment has become, a fallout from my weight-loss journey. Daily walking, going to the gym, and documenting every aspect of my bodily functions in my GLP‑1 journal is time-consuming. Go ahead — ask me anything about what went in or came out of my body over the past eight weeks and it’s all written down. I could even tell you my oxygen saturation, blood pressure, or sleep apnea number for any given day. The journal also tracks moods, energy, food noise, hunger, and thirteen possible side effects, none of which I’ve had except daily hiccups — which isn’t even one of the listed side effects. Lucky me. The journal is a great tool for people who like answering questions like: What was your win this week? What will you change next week? What do you want to discuss with your doctor or pharmacist? Where was your injection site this week? Etc., etc.

None of the above topics is calling my name this week. But I can hear Mahjong speaking up, and it’s been a long time since I’ve written about that obsession of mine. For anyone who doesn’t know or remember, I’m in charge of our Mahjong group here on campus. I text members the day before our weekly game days to get a count on how many will be there. On game days I set up the sets we’ll need, and afterward I tally the stats, and put the sets and room back together. I do get help with those two tasks. And when I get back to my apartment, I feed the stats to my AI MS Copilot to figure out every player’s percentages of wins vs. games played over the year. I’m the second-highest winner so far, winning 39% of the games I play. Don’t be too impressed by that. Online, when I play against three bots, I only win 18% of the time. Last year online I was at least above the statistical average of 25%. This year’s card is considerably harder — and that’s not just my opinion. I blame my poor stats on that.

Anyway, I’m in the process of re-designing classes that I’ll be teaching starting the first week of September. This will be my forth year teaching. The first year I co-taught with the woman who actually started the group and taught me and four others how to play. But she’s got dementia now and isn’t able to teach anymore. She still plays, but she’s down to winning only 10% of her games and she has to ask for clarification on rules and tile identifications quite often. She handles it well — with lots of humor — and it’s still a delight to play at her table.

In a CCC like ours, my Mahjong classes have drawn several people who were in the various stages of dementia, and when they sign up I’m always hopeful they don’t show up for classes. But who am I to say what someone else can or cannot learn? So if they do show up, I do my best to teach them. I’ve been told I have the patience of Job, but not knowing the Bible story of Job, I don’t fully understand what that means — other than I know it’s meant as a compliment. This year I’m revamping my first class as an introductory lecture of sorts on the history of the game and the Mahjong League, plus showing a set laid out with its suits all together and another set laid out the way it looks when the game is ready to begin. I’ll also hand out a syllabus of what they’ll learn in each of the three classes that will run through September. I’m hoping this introduction — instead of diving right into the nitty-gritty of a complicated game to learn — will cut the dropout rate down because fewer will sign up when they see what all is involved in learning the game.

So there you have it — my past week in all its chaotic, funny, frustrating detail. No wonder I couldn’t settle on a single topic. Life doesn’t always hand things out in manageable crumbs; sometimes it tosses the whole bakery at you. That’s the way I feel sometimes, like I’m getting lost in the minutia of life and overlooking what really matters. Still, even in the mess of wounds, weight loss, Mahjong stats, and the daily business of staying upright and engaged, there’s a rhythm to it all. Even if it is a rhythm that, at 84, is moving too fast for me to gather answers to my own questions about what really matters, what's next, and whether The Great Unknown has a Mahjong table waiting for me. Sometimes I wish I had my old Ouija Board back to answer these burning questions. ©

Walking With Plato: A Senior Community Field Trip

In her latest essay, Jean proves that a simple walk around her senior community can escalate into a full‑blown philosophical adventure. Armed with a battered copy of Plato’s The Republic, a set of Cliffs Notes that have clearly survived several eras, and the determination of a woman who recently decided that 6,000 steps a day is her new lifestyle, she heads out to improve her mind while her lungs negotiate the terms. Along the way she encounters bullfrogs performing an unsolicited chorus, swans who enjoy posing for photos, and a snapping turtle who behaves as though he owns the property. With her trademark blend of wit, curiosity, and ’80s‑honed academic bravado, Jean draws connections between ancient Greek political drama and the modern spectacle of dog walkers and lake side wildlife. The result is part nature walk, part political commentary, and part reminder that if Plato had lived in a senior community, he’d have had plenty to write about...AI

It was the end of another week and I needed a topic to blog about. In my world of widowhood and independent living in a senior community — in my world of being obsessed with the new hobbies of diet and exercise — you’d think something would jump out. But all I could come up with was Plato’s The Republic.

Why that ancient book? Why now did I grab my battered copy off the shelf — the same one from my second round of college in the ’80s, when I studied philosophy with the kind of intensity only a woman reinventing her life can muster? Maybe it’s because since increasing my daily step count from an average of 2,500 to over 6,000, I’ve been trying to also improve my mind, if not my image. Books and walking seem like a strange pairing, but my walks are broken up by bench‑sitting, which gives my lungs time to catch up with my heart rate, as well as giving me more reading time.

Bench One: with a view of where the bass notes of the bullfrog choir can be heard coming from the cattails. Last week a snapping turtle strutted across the walkway as if he owned the place. I resisted the temptation to pull my feet up on the bench, knowing he as eyeing my toes for dinner. He was at least 18 inches long.

Bench Two: the lake overlook, where I sit with the sun on my face hoping the swans will glide by for a close‑up. If not them, maybe a family of coy will swim past. We have Canadian Geese, Ducks, Great Egrets, and Cranes too — although those last two prefer their privacy on the far side of the lake.

Bench Three: the woods, where I take what the Japanese call a Forest Bath — soaking in oxygen, solitude, and the quiet authority of the trees. I sit long enough for the birds, squirrels, and chipmunks to forget I’m there and resume their business. And I sometimes use my Audubon bird call to try to start a “conversation,” though I’ve only mastered one species despite the device’s promise of a dozen.  

 

Place near the woods where walkers build mini cairns on a large boulder, myself included.

Bench Four: the Grand Central bench, perfect for people‑watching. Dog walkers, resident and neighborhood walkers, anyone coming or going from the underground parking and the main entrances of two building plus the wood shop has to pass by this bench. 

Underground parking (center), to the right is the walking path down to the lake.

Main ID building in the distance, my building to the right. 

The main intersection where the paths to both the lake and woods start. The building houses our wood shop and arts/crafts, with the main road through the campus running in front of building.

Because people often ask what I’m reading, I’ve learned to curate my book choices. No one needs to know I occasionally enjoy trashy stuff. So I pick books that make me look thoughtful, maybe even nerdy: Eats, Shoots & Leaves (my annual punctuation refresher), On Writing by Stephen King (my holy scripture on the craft), and How to Write Funny, which is now unintentionally not so funny because its humor is stuck at the turn of the century.

Last week I started Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises but quit three‑quarters of the way through. I picked it because a recent article in The Atlantic called it the best‑written novel of the twentieth century. I wanted to see what made it so great. But I hated the dribbling, unending dialogues, and I stopped reading just before the bullfighting — which, apparently, is where all the wisdom about the meaning of life is revealed. I put it back on the shelf where I can continue pretending I’m better read than I am. Although guilt at not finishing the book might making me pick it up again.

Which brings me to my current walking companion: Plato’s The Republic — and its Cliffs Notes (the pre‑internet cheat sheet to the classics). Both are heavily underlined in yellow, and the margins of the former are filled with notes in my handwriting. Proof I once understood the text? Or maybe I was writing down what a professor insisted we understand? We'll never know.

What shocked me this time around was a passage noting that 370‑plus years B.C. (when The Republic was written), Greece was fighting wars over who should govern: the Democrats or the Oligarchs. I read that paragraph several times, not liking the parallel to our own era because it could be said we’re living through the same argument now. Why hasn’t mankind settled the question of fairness in governing after so many years? But then, I’m a Democrat. If I worshiped at the altar of money, I might see things differently.

Plato had an answer for why we still fight over who controls governments: simply put, times change but human nature doesn’t. Which also explains why so many stories in the Bible are labeled “prophecy.” Prophecy is easy to understand when you think of human nature as a primal force as predictable as the sun rising and setting. The nature of humans to love or hate, to be greedy or generous, caring or callous — these are constant in all civilizations. Our job is to keep these opposing forces in balance. Whether we call it Dualism, Complementary Opposites, or Yin-Yang forces the universe can't function without polarity in all things.  

And here I am, old enough to be tired of the fight but still stubborn enough to believe we have to keep fighting if we want to leave the world better than we found it.

One of the questions in the back of the Cliffs Notes asks whether Plato’s criticism of oligarchy or democracy applies today. I wrote in the margin: “You’d have to be blind and deaf not to see that same struggle going on in Trump’s America.”  ©

See you next Wednesday.   

 “Whereas the truth is that the State

 in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern 

is always the best and most quietly governed,

 and the State in which they are most eager,

 the worst.”

 

Plato 

 

A fenced-in area on campus for the residences of the Memory Care and Assisted Living.