Gray Wolf Productions

Category: Musings

  • Snow, Ice, Electricity, and Internet

    ice on tree limbs
  • 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.

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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.

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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. 

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  • Admiration Over A Lifetime

    Who do you admire? Who do I admire? 

    It’s not as easy to answer as it is to ask.

    There are people I have admired over my lifetime each for a very different thing. Many of them I have forgotten about unless I actively sit and recall who they were and why I admired them at the time. 

    Who do you admire? Who do I admire? It’s not as easy to answer as it is to ask. So I ran back through my life and thought about a specific for people who probably had the most impact on me. At least these are the ones I can think of now. I’m sure tomorrow and the day after I’ll come up with a longer list – but this is it for today

    In order oF appearance In My LIFE

    5th or 6th grade teacher

    One I admired was a teacher from grammar school – who I really admire to this day but I don’t remember her name. She encouraged all of us, but especially the girls in the class, to show our smartness. A rarity back then!

    professor/friend/colleague

    There was a professor in graduate school who became a good friend and colleague and we remained such until she died several years ago. She was the person who got me very involved in politics, in psychology and writing, and many other things for which I will always be thankful.

    my son

    I have always loved my son but now I can admire him as well. He is a very brilliant person and I love having discussions with him, mostly about politics and life but about other things as well. He turned into a super great adult. Sometimes I wonder how that  happened with me as his mother but hey he did it.

    my daughter-in-law

    Many years ago while visiting me, my son met a woman and they have been together ever since. I admire her because she is so generous to all she considers family and now that they are living near me, that includes several of my friends and neighbors..

    Comments? Thoughts? Thank you. Comment section is down at the bottom of the page….

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