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.

Reading and Wall Washing

 I admit that I’ve spent the pandemic reading a lot of trashy books. With Kindle’s free Unlimited you can get a vast range of---shall we say---writing skills. Some books are just too stupid for words yet they have no trouble stringing a bunch of them together and calling them a book. I never write reviews of those too-stupid-for-words books because I’m quite sure if I’d been born a few decades later than I was some of those hardcopy manuscripts I had stored in the basement and I finally downsized out of my life last summer would have made their way to a self-published book on Amazon Unlimited where no one apparently proof-reads them or edits the content for quality. It takes enormous dedication and guts to get a book written and I'm not about to step on someone else's dream and, yes, I'm one of those people who thinks every little kid deserves a participation ribbon. Time to sort out the winners from the losers when kids are old enough to figure out what they enjoy doing. I sound like my mother. "I don't care what after school class you take, but you WILL keep taking classes until you find something you like doing." She didn't actually say those words but when I was an adult it's what she told me when I asked why she turned me into class-aholic and herself into a chauffeur.

I’ve read that real publishing companies routinely comb the stats at Amazon looking for those writers who know how to promote the heck out of their work and have parlayed themselves into great sales with a track record of favorable reader reviews. Those who can do that eventually land themselves honest-to-goodness book deals. The author of Fifty Shades of Grey comes to mind---barfing my breakfast up on that one---and Andy Weir who wrote one of my all-time favorite books, The Martian, are two examples. The latter of which I read free on Amazon before he made it big and his book was turned into a movie.

Another example of someone who was discovered through Amazon Unlimited was Mike Omer and his mystery, A Killer’s Mind that outsold J.K. Rowling, James Patterson, and Stephen King one summer. Some others who started out as self-published and made it big include: Christopher Paolini (Inheritance Cycle), Lisa Genova (Still Alice) and Amanda Hocking (My Blood Approves). So even though reading Amazon Unlimited books can be a hit and miss thing you can still find some thought provoking stuff. Not so much in the romance genre where I tend to hang out but I’ve come to the conclusion that the genre makes sense for me. 1) I was so boy crazy as a teenager I can hardly stand looking back at those embarrassing years. 2) People watching has long been a favorite hobby of mine and living vicariously through the pages of a book where people fall in love puts me in a better mood than reading a thriller, for example, where I start looking at others as a possible threat to home and body. I admire Stephen King, practically worship his writing prowess but I can't sleep nights with one of his books in bed with me.

Nope, if the pandemic has done anything for me it’s made me come out of the reading closet, no long hiding or being ashamed my preferred reading genre. The last romance I read, for example, was a weirdly engaging book about a famous artist who lost his sight for a year due to a car accident and then he gets eye transplants of eyes from a photographer who was once engaged to a woman the artist couldn’t stop thinking about after they met and who he couldn't stop painting before they met. The whole premise of the story line was that our eyes are the windows to our souls and the soul remembers... Oops, sorry about the spoiler but I doubt anyone reading this will pop over to Amazon to find The Girl in the Painting. And if the title sound familiar it's because I shared a quote from it in my last blog. “She is the red string on my finger. I can’t forget her.”

Change of topics: The project I’m doing this week around the house involves working my way toward staging my house. My library room that used to have two walls lined with book shelves and hundreds of books now has only one wall of empty shelves and the sleeper chair that was sharing a room with my artist easel and arty-farty supplies got moved to my library that is now rebranded as an office/guest room. The son-I-wish-I-had came over to help me move the furniture around including moving an antique Morris chair patent dated in the 1800s and monster size showcase with four sides of glass. They went out to the garage where I’ll try to sell them in the spring. We agreed that transporting the showcase in the winter would be a major problem for a buyer, so there's no point advertising it now. I’ve been busy washing the walls in those two rooms and spreading the art stuff out to take over the whole space. I finished the "room swap/rebranding project" and the photo at the top of my sleeper chair corner in one room and the photo at the bottom is of one end of the other room I call my art room. I'm really proud of those clean walls! And in case you're wondering why I don't have my window blind pulled all the way down  in the office/guest room it's because that's my dog's window to the world of other canines.

As for me at my age washing walls, I’ve got a special mop with a round head that I use exclusively for washing walls which means I don’t have to get on ladders. Next week, though, I have someone coming out to give me a price on washing the walls in my living room and adjoining dining area. Those walls are too high for my mop and I have too many heavy pieces of art hung for me to wrestle them off and back on the walls. While he was here, the-son-I-wish-I-had and I went over the master plan of what all has to be done to get ready before the house goes up for sale. My 'To Do' list is getting shorter and most of it involves stuff that can't be done until spring or can't be done without some help from others. I'll get there but I'm getting sick of making decisions. Like what color to paint my deck furniture that Tim took with him when he left and dropped off to a body shop where it will get sandblasted and painted with car paint that will outlast me. The vintage chair, side table and foot stool will only cost me $150 to paint and if I had to buy new deck stuff I'd spend that much if not more. But I'm so worn out from decisions and I sometimes need to remind myself why I'm going through all the trouble. Monday, though, it will start feeling real. I have an appointment to go to the construction site where I'll actually get my first look inside my unit. ©

This is the chair that's getting painted "Liquid Jade" (see color chip below). It's a really comfortable chair---rocks a little, the wire mess makes it cool to sit in and the arms make it easy to get out of. The deck siding the chair will go against is a dark gray and I'll get a colorful outdoor rug for the space.

 

This is one end of my art room. I think people will be able to visualize it as a bedroom now.

Since a few people asked, this is my mop... I call it a round headed mop but it really isn't. There's a pump action part on the handle that moves those two rollers down to squeak out the water.

Late Night Books

While looking for free books to read with my Kindle Unlimited Account I ran across a title that had me laughing out loud at two o’clock in the morning. Yes, two. I had gone to bed early and was fast asleep when my head hit the pillow only to wake up four hours later, wide awake with nothing to do but stare at the shadowy figure of the dog snorting on his bed in front of the TV cabinet. By 2:30 I did the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to do, I got out of bed and woke up the computer so its screen lights could mess with my brain waves compounding my sleep cycle issues.

Searching for my next book to read is usually an hour long process because I read the reader views as well as the book blurbs Amazon provides. And I won’t lie, I’m a title junky. I’m fascinated by them and envious of those who can write catchy titles. I’ve never been good at titles and back when my husband was a live when I’d create something be it a poem or a painting he was the one who came up with the prefect titles. And he was a picky editor who often got exasperated with my ‘creative’ spelling but that was before Spell-Check and Alexa so if I wanted to write, I needed him. 

Boy, did I get side tracked. The title that had me laughing was, Taken by the Alien Savage, a Sci-Fi Alien Romantic Comedy. It was free but even at that bargain price I couldn’t get myself to download it even though I found the whole premise hysterically funny in the middle of the night. What if I died before the book got deleted from my Kindle? What would the next owner of the device think about me? Granted it wouldn’t be like finding a dildo in a nightstand but I don’t want to die with stuff in the house that would have whoever cleans out my estate telling stories about the "old woman and the crazy stuff she kept." I hear those kinds of stories all the time from the son-I-wish-I-had who is in the business of cleaning out estate houses. And just for the record, if I had a couple of shrunken heads in the house I would at least leave a note attached explaining their presence.

Anyway, add to that weird, sci-fi plot line of that alien romance I’m pretty sure it was also part of a sub-genre of romances for “curvy women” that usually have fat cover girl models hanging all over super alpha guys without an ounce of fat on their bodies. I read a book in that sub-genre when they first came out and even though my body type is more like those protagonists than in normal romances, I really hated the whole idea. If I’m going to live in a heroine's head I want her to be what I am not…kick-ass strong and healthy and/or a breath-takingly beautiful woman with brains. Better yet, a breath-takingly beautiful brainiac with a whistle-worthy body who can attract the eye of a kick-ass strong Navy Seal.  Nothing shallow about me. Remember you heard that here first. 

By the way, did you know that if you ask Alexa to spell ‘dildo’ she spells it d****o? I had to consult my Dictionary of Slangs and Euphemisms to find it and it brought back visions of me yelling at my mother, “How am I supposed to look it up if I can’t spell it?” Alexa does not spell smutty words, I don’t think she spells swear words either but I already know how to spell most of them so I haven’t quizzed the extent of her knowledge in that area. My paperback Dictionary of Slangs and Euphemisms is so old the cover had to be taped back in place and the pages are brown and brittle. I just looked it up on Amazon and one of their sellers has the same edition I own on sale for only $703.85 plus shipping while a newer edition used hardcopy is at the bargain price of $37.00. If I ordered a newer addition, what would the person closing my estate think if they found not one but two copies on my bookshelf? They’d probably throw them both out, not knowing there’s a market for first addition smut. My copy is so worn out, though, that it wouldn’t go for $703.85 and who the heck tacks on $3.85 to a $700 price tag? What’s that all about? A joke? Greed? Inquiring minds want to know!

I just sold a lot of six books on e-Bay for over $200. (Not smut, just to be perfectly clear.) It was a bargain to the guy who bought them because if sold individually they’d net $400-$450. I have about 50 rare-ish books to sell and my backup plan, if I run out of time before I move, was to donate them to the library. In the pre-pandemic days the library sold collectible books online to help them buy new books but they haven’t accepted donated books since the pandemic started. Goodwill is taking books again but it would break my heart to leave my rare books there. Yup, call me a give-away snob.

Who would have ever guessed how far-reaching a pandemic goes, how many areas of our lives it changes. Not being able to sleep at night is a pandemic fall-out for me and it's why I was looking at stupid alien romances in the middle of the night. And then I discovered Keri Beevis who writes psychological thrillers. I'm on her third book full of twists and turns and now I have HER to thank for keeping me up at night saying to myself, just one more chapter! ©

Just to prove I'm not making this sub-genre of romances up.

Trash Reading, Duck Tape and Bad-Boy Birds

I finally did it. I got my fill of reading military/action adventure romances. Yes, I know I said that once before but I had a relapse. I didn’t mean to do it, I swear. And you don’t have to tell me that I should be using my reading time to improve my mind, not giving my fantasies fodder that make me feel young and kick-ass strong again. But it was late at night and I couldn’t sleep and there was my Kindle begging me to download some testosterone-on-steroids to kick the pandemic worries out of my brain. One book later I left author Susan Stoker in the dust and for good this time, after being turned off by a third book of hers that was treating S&M like its normal. It’s not, ladies and gentlemen. It’s just not! I think she was trying to ride the Fifty Shades of Grey train back when that was ‘the thing’ and while my ultra-ego might like alpha males I want my alpha males to have a code of honor that does not include physical or mental abuse no matter how much the "little woman" claims to like it. If I could, I'd lock the Christian Greys of the world up in one iron cage and throw away the key. Okay, they might like that, so I’ll need to re-think that idea if I ever get put in charge of the world. Maybe a bullet in the head would be better. Ohmygod, am I turning into a blood-thirsty bitch or what!

But I do need to thank Susan Stoker for leading me to Pippa Grant. Apparently there is a trend in genre fiction marketing these days where 2-3 authors promote each other by using the same characters. A secondary character in, say, Susan’s book will appear as a main character in Pippa Grant's book. And all the authors work their way through a group of men who share the same careers to intro-connect their stories. Susan is into Navy Seals and Delta Forces, Pippa is into former boy bands and pro hockey and baseball players. The biggest difference between these two authors, though, is Pippa’s books are billed as ‘romantic comedies’ and I was hooked on her writing style from the first one I read, America’s Geekheart, which had me laughing out loud at 3:00 in the morning, pandemic stress be damned. I’ve since read four more of her books but that’s still my favorite. I’m going to sound like a guy who claims he only subscribed to Playboy for the articles when I say this but I’m only reading Pippa for the humor. Her 'players'---and I don’t mean sports here---are the naked photos I overlook. Well, as much as anyone could ignore the stud muffins in romance books. But believe me when I say this in my best Scarlett O’Hara voice, “As God is my witness when this pandemic is over I will finally finish reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace.” Ya, it really is on my Kindle and I'm planning on reading it to the very last page before I die. Don't let anyone tell you I don't have lofty goals.

Okay, only 427 more words to write to fulfill my minimum, by-weekly quota. It’s hard to come up with things to write about when stay-at-home orders are still in effect and I’m not doing anything but sorting out my past life through e-Bay sales. No doubt I’ll write about that topic again---after all my blog is my diary. But for now I’m bored by that topic so I’ll opine about the other big event in my life. Yes, the ghost in the house who likes to look inside the refrigerator and leave the door standing open. If you’re thinking I’m just getting old and forgetting to shut the door myself after all those pandemic grazing trips I make inside my Whirlpool, I thought the same thing the first couple of times I found the door standing up. On closer examination I figured out that along with the ghost theory there’s the other theory that the seal is wearing out. 

In my heydays of being a Spoiled Woman I could have just told---aka nagged---my dad or husband about the problem and like black magic they’d one day produce a new seal and repair the appliance. There wasn’t a single thing inside or outside of a house they couldn’t fix. And now days I bet I wouldn't even be able to find someone to replace a refrigerator seal. Darn! I. Do. Not. Want. To. Buy a new, expensive appliance when I don’t plan to stay in this house. So far, I’ve avoided using Duck Tape to keep the door from swinging open on its own, but I might buy a white roll to have on hand just in case it comes to that. Every woman needs Duck Tape and bungee cords in her tool box. They can temporarily fix anything and isn’t it nice that they come in colors, now, so you don’t have to be like Frazier’s father with his silver-on-green, taped-up La-Z-Boy in his son's fancy-ass penthouse living room. I loved that TV show back in its day. 

Ninety-nine words to go and I think I’ll use them by writing about the show of testosterone on my deck railing this week in the form of a pair of breeding mourning dove and a robin who seemed to think he should get in on the action. Yes, you read that right. A plump robin, an uncooperative dove with lady parts and male dove who seemed to up to the task of protecting her honor. In all the years the doves have been hanging around my deck rail and a near-by pine tree where they build their nest, this is the first time I’ve seen an attempt to throw off the balance of the species. Mother Nature is off her meds again! ©