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  • February Has Been A Challenge

    February Has Been A Challenge

    Back on the very first day of February I was in a great mood I was energized I felt like it was a restart of some thing and then fact I wrote a blog post about: Restarting …..

    And I did restart. I was working on my websites, I was writing articles, I was beginning to organize for a podcast and webinar – and to rework some courses that were halfway done and polish up some books that were nearly ready to be published.

    And wow it felt so good.

    And then the weather gods decided to do their thing. We had just had an historically warm January and December. There had been talk of snow – but that’s been constant since I’ve lived here and it rarely happens – but guess what?

    This year it happened.

    By my New England standards, it was not a lot of snow. But by Pacific Northwest standards it was.

    My dog was happy with it and for several days so was I. It wasn’t cold out the snow was pretty – the dog and I took lots of walks in the snow.

    Then along came a cold spell and a nasty East wind. Where I am east winds are brutal.

    That water that you see through my lilac branches is the Columbia river. That empty space you see is where a house used to be.The east wind was really blasting my plants and my house.

    Then because winter doesn’t usually last very long here the sun came out and rapidly melted all the ice.

    Unfortunately because of the warm December and January many trees have leaves and buds on them so they went crash boom into the electric transformers and overhead wires. I had no electricity for two days – some people had no electricity for over a week. And we also had no Internet service because that was also taken out with all of the damage from the falling tree branches and powerlines and everything else that went crash boom. It really was a serious state emergency.

    And then, I got my 2nd dose of the covid-19 vaccine. 

    In spite of my having no reaction to the first shot except for a little whatever a few days later the second shot I was fine for about 18 hours and then I felt awful. I stayed in bed for the better part of a day and a half. I had a headache and felt nauseous lightheaded. I’m glad the electricity was on but other than that I did nothing. In retrospect having a few days of not feeling so great far outweighs getting the virus itself. But it was another few days of February that were a challenge.

    And TADA – it’s finally nearing the end of February.

    February is a short month and for that I am eternally grateful this year. I’m gearing up for the tail end of February going into March – with the energy and work schedule that I had wayback at the end of January.


  • Snow, Ice, Electricity, and Internet

    The words in the title could be put in a picture with the caption – these things do not go well together!

    In my part of the pacific northwest we had temperatures below freezing for a period of time. We also had snow over several days. Then the snow started to melt and the freezing rain and sleet came down – and all of the snow on the trees turn to ice.

    ice on limbs

    My potted lilac tree

    This is one of my three potted lilacs. I love lilacs and I have them wherever I live. This is one of them covered with ice. The ice melted off my plants and they are all fine. But imagine larger trees – trees beginning to bud and leaf out, dangling over power lines and utility lines with snow, sleet, hail and everything falling down on them and sticking! Then add in a sudden thaw with warmish rain! Power lines went down everywhere.

    Power lines

    The power lines in my part of the city are not this picture – but looking at it you know it’s power lines. They are all over the place in this country. Most places have their power lines above ground and often trees grow very near them. Sometimes trees are trimmed back by the power company, sometimes not. Add to the scenario here – the the 2nd warmest December and January on record. Trees, geese, ducks, etc. started to do what they do come Spring: leaf, bud, nest!


    I did not hear any transformers blow but friends of mine were reporting that it’s a very odd sound to hear crash boom whoops – then no electricity. My electricity went off at 3:30 in the morning and I did not hear a thing as I am not that near my transformer. I was, though, very suddenly aware of the silence.


    The updates from the electric company were pretty positive for a while. They estimated it would be back by 6:30 AM then maybe by 10 or noon then maybe by eight at night then it was maybe one day later then they said we estimate everybody will be back in service by Thursday night. 


    We all figured that as soon as they went to fix one line another one went down because power was out all over the city. There are two power companies here and they both were busy working and crews came in from other states to help because it was/is a disaster.


    People in all electric houses remained cold until their power came back on. And because the city doesn’t really plow streets there was no easy way to travel around to get warm or get food and besides we’re still in the middle of a pandemic  – so most people just bundled up and were thankful is was not that cold – the temperatures had gone up into the 40s.


    But you really come face-to-face with how reliant we are on electricity. Of course, there was no computer and Internet because of no electricity. I sat in my car and charged my phone there which is what most people I know did. And I almost hate to admit this but it’s funny – I took my coffee bean grinder up and ground some beans for the coffee because I make French press coffee and I could at least start my gas stove with matches. And – the ground beans did make the car smell very good while I sat there charging my phone.

    And The internet

    Our power came back on my neighbors and I were ecstatic because we could do things we weren’t able to do and I could more easily use my phone for work because I knew I could charge it quickly in my house. But then I turned on my computer and discovered no Internet. So I contacted the company and they said they were working on it. The entire neighborhood was out – frankly we have so little love for our Internet provider we don’t trust them. But it actually was a neighborhood provider outage. That came back on this morning and they said they would text when it did and they did. I had been out in soy truck up on the main road so I knew they actually were working in the neighborhood. The text followed the sighting of the truck so I assume it had made the rounds and had redone whatever connections were undone. 


    But like with the electricity, you come to realize how much you do rely on having Internet service – and over the years speedy Internet service. Sometimes when it’s not fast enough for my liking I remind myself what it was like to live with dial up. If you were not using Internet in those days let me tell you, it was slower than you can imagine.

    I sometimes think about the people who say they want to live off the grid. I don’t think they really mean off the grid I think they mean partially off the grid because it’s very hard – unless you are very well prepared to really live without electricity, without Internet, without cell phone service, and without even a landline wherever it is you decide to land when you go off the grid. I know there are people who do it. In my life I have actually spent days and months without such services. But I always come back to civilization because I miss it. This time around I was able to deal with all of it because I knew the electric company would get the power back on – and I knew the Internet provider would get the service going again, etc.

    We have come to rely on our infrastructure and not give it much thought. It’s only when it goes down we realize how fragile it is. It will be nice when we think about infrastructure all the time and fix it before it breaks. But that’s become a political issue – it didn’t used to be so political, but it is now – and I’m just gonna leave this thought.

    My serious concerns were for the COVID-19 vaccinations because here, the vaccination spots closed due to bad roads and weather. But because we live in a society, people did band together, got these places up and running again, and vaccines are again being doled out. I understand there are problems with some of the transporting of vaccines across the country because the weather is bad everywhere but people are trying their best to get the vaccinations out to the different places and into the arms of the people.

    Your turn. Thoughts? Comments? Random newsletters?

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  • My Neighborhood

    My Neighborhood

    I live in a floating home, in a moorage, in a city. It’s the one place I have lived the longest since I left New York City, where I was born and raised. I fell in love with it because it met my desires to be in the country and in a city – and here I can do both at the same time. Being on the river has a very country feel to it. I often compare it to camping but with indoor plumbing. And heat. And Internet. And every store I need within quick driving distance. 

    But I am also in a city and I can be in the downtown area in a short time period.

    MY NEIGHBORHOOD

    My House

    My house is what I call a 2-part home. The main structure and what is known as a tenderhouse.

    My Moorage

    This is a summer evening looking out at what I call my backyard.

    Part of My Garden

    Everything I grow has to be in pots. These are my nasturtiums and some of my other plants in the back with the dog sniffing them.

    My Dog

    No part of my life here can be presented without a picture of Tova. She loves living here, playing tennis, and being able to walk along the levee.

    But as with most places in my life,  I move on. The pandemic has shown me that I don’t want to live here anymore. Which surprised me. I want a backyard. I want a big garden. I want a different kind of lifestyle and neighborhood. And that will happen.

    Thoughts? Comments? 

    Random newsletters? 

    Thank you!

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  • My Father’s Impacts

    My Father’s Impacts

    LIFETIME IMPACTS

    I have been thinking a lot about the past – who and what impacted me and in what way. It’s hard to remember all of this because I’ve lived a long time. That in itself is a good thing, but it means that some of the things that impacted me were so long ago that my memories are distorted.

    My Father and Reading

    My father died when I was in my 20s, and I never realized his major impact on me until years later. 

    My father’s life was typical for his time. He finished the eighth grade and he went to apprentice with his father as a photoengraver. A job he held until he died. Worked for a major New York City newspaper and I realized that he was responsible for my having my nose buried in words for my entire life. Because he worked for a newspaper, in those days all the other newspapers left copies of their papers for the employees of the other papers – and so he came home from work every night with lots of newspapers. And I read them. 

    My Father and Trivia

    Crossword puzzles and almanacs are the part of my life he still impacts.

    And because he worked for a newspaper, he brought home books such as world almanacs, world facts, world whatevers – all compendia of facts. He and I did the NYT crossword puzzle on the kitchen table over coffee every morning as far back as I can remember. I am still addicted to the New York Times crossword puzzles, trivia, and coffee. And I thank him for these parts of me.

    My Father and Home Repair Skills

    My father did a lot of work around the house. He did plumbing carpentry he did some fancy jigsaw work and encouraged me to help him

    I was the kid who knew how to use the table saw when I was very young. I could do some plumbing, I could do a lot of woodworking, and I got interested in a lot of other craft stuff from him. Not to forget my mother who taught me how to knit and crochet and do other stuff – but the skills I learned from my father have saved me much money.

    Thoughts? Comments? Random Newsletters?

    Thank you!

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  • Aging And Me: An Introduction To A Lengthy Professional And Personal Journey

    Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

    My Story

    I know a lot about a lot of things because for my entire life I have been a most voracious reader. I think as a kid I lived in the library I still would but it’s closed because of the pandemic. I have now taken to loving e-books.

    What I know the most about I think are things in the realm of psychology. I went to graduate school in psychology because I wanted to be a researcher instead I got in with a group of psychologists as Developmental Psychology was just becoming a field and I got totally intrigued with the entire lifespan.

    Over my many years of teaching I have taught classes on everything from Child Development to Aging. So I do know a lot about the lifespan. And I also know how the research has changed over the many decades that I have been in this field.

    And because I myself have been aging over this same period of time I know a lot about aging from a very personal perspective. So that’s my story and I’m sticking to it – at least for this blog post.


    The Problem As I See It

    It can be a problem or not, but the fact is we have no real definition of old, elderly, or other words related to aging. As with most things psychology, terms change over time because norms change over time. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it here:

     normal is a statistical term and It changes as what is being measured changes

    A Solution?

    I spend a lot of time reading and writing. I write a lot about aging, I read a lot about aging, and one of the many things I get so annoyed about is reading words like “how do you teach old people over 40 to use computers?” Or in terms of the current pandemic, pronouncements like: “the elderly should stay home.” Every country has its own definition on who those elderly are who should be staying home. 

    Is it people over 50 or 60? or over 80? And why is it everybody of those ages? The pandemic has made me think a lot more about how we label different ages and stages of life. It’s been something I have pondered and written about over my lifetime and there is no answer – because as I said above it’s all based on statistics and things change and therefore norms change – but in most cultures the labels never change – which is why I hate using specific labels – because they stick.

    It’s an ongoing conversation that needs to happen. And it has to Include the media who portray older people as useless, in wheelchairs, forgetful, and even useless. I see friends online saying things like “oh I had a senior moment” because they forgot where their car keys were. That’s not a senior moment – that’s normal. Some of us have been doing that since we’ve been driving – and that’s often when we were teens. 

    And we have to stop saying “oh you don’t look your age” because that means we have a very different idea of what specific ages look like and those ideas reflect our bias about those ages. 

    I have another blog, Grow Older Better, where I do write about aging – well I used to write about aging. Now that I’m getting back to blogging and redoing my website – I will be writing about aging over there.

    What are your thoughts on aging? Thank you for your input…

  • Thinking About The Number 4

    Today is the fourth day of a month. It is also the fourth day in a row that I am writing blog posts
    because I am getting back on track with writing every day. 

    Number four, I thought, had no real meaning to me. It’s not one of my favorite numbers. I like 3, 5, and 7 [and a few others] so I started thinking about four. What I actually did was go to one of my sites [PresenterMedia] where I can get images. I looked for a bouncy 4 and it was blue so I changed the color to green and voila! I got my idea! 4 seasons!!

    So here we go – 4 seasons!

    MY four: seasons

    Winter

    I love winter. I love winter so much I spent a lot of my adult life living in New England. But then I got tired of all that white stuff under my feet, shoveling it, and all of that so I left. Now I live where I can drive to snow but I don’t get it in my city as much.

    Spring

    I also love spring. I love the flowers growing and the bees are rising but I could get started on my soap box about bees because we don’t have enough of them anymore and they’re dying off. When the bees go the food supply goes but that’s for another blog post.

    Summer

    Summer is not always my favorite season. It really depends on where I live. I do not like hot and I especially do not like hot and humid. And I lived in Washington DC for almost 2 decades so I know hot and humid. I can adapt to it, but I prefer to avoid it.

    Fall

    I do like fall. I love the colorful maple leaves that fall. When I was a kid we collected them and coated them with paraffin so that we could have them forever. 

    Thoughts? Comments? Random Newsletters?

    Thank you!

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