Last week saw me huffing and puffing on a perfectly flat path along the river, bones aching when I returned from a 3.5 miles hike (today’s photographs). My usual inclination would be to be demoralized. Particularly since I had been collecting stories of women my age and older, all of whom pulled off things physically a million times more challenging.
I was thinking of Ernestine Shepard who is a competitive body builder, trainer and model in her 80s.
I was wondering about Ginette Bedard who ran marathons at age 86 four years ago still. She did not start until she was 68 and has run 10 marathons since – good G-d.
I envied Jane Dotchin, a British woman now in her early eighties, who treks 600 miles with her dog and pony every year from Hexham, Northumberland to the Scottish Highlands.
Screenshot
Everything she needs, tent and food included, is in the saddlebacks, and she covers about 20 miles a day. Do yourself a favor and watch the short clip linked in her name above – it brings endless cheer.
Luckily, I had help fighting off demoralized thinking from two recently encountered sources. One is a a book by a contemporary social scientist at Yale University, Becca Levy. Her research, described at length in Breaking the Age Code, tackles how we internalize personal and cultural stereotypes about aging and how these adopted beliefs then have insidious consequences. The book lays out clearly how many structural factors contribute to ageism, but also how we can employ some simple mechanism so that we won’t fall for these beliefs and have them crimp our life expectancy. Here is an excerpt that succinctly tells what her focus is all about.
Her data suggest that activating positive age stereotypes for just 10 minutes or so improves people’s memory performance, gait, balance, speed, and even the will to live. I cannot judge if those are short term effects demonstrated in the lab, or actually extend to real life situations for the long run. I can confirm, though, that my other source of encouragement has captured what I have seen in my own context of aging and being surrounded by aging friends.
Here are the words of Simone de Beauvoir (from The Coming of Age, the obscuring American translation of her original title La Vieillesse, Old Age):
“Growing, ripening, aging, dying — the passing of time is predestined, inevitable.
There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning — devotion to individuals, to groups or to causes, social, political, intellectual or creative work… In old age we should wish still to have passions strong enough to prevent us turning in on ourselves. One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, compassion.” (Ref.)
Looks like we’re best served by marching some miles together with friends, passionately demonstrating for a cause close to our hearts. Connections and causes. Nature can wait!
Alternatively, it could be the cause. Some extraordinary lives were linked to nature – devoted to ecological research and saving the forests. Here is the spellbinding portrait of a woman academic who spent her adult life in a hunting lodge without electricity and running water in the Polish woods, sharing her housing with a 400 pound boar called Froggy, a lynx named Agatka and a kleptomaniac crow. Read the story here – it is guaranteed to make your day, another day towards old(er)age with a positive role model no less!
Simone Kossack with Froggy. What about all those clocks?
Music today is by another favorite activist who is still performing in her older years. Chaka Khan, Queen of Funk, and erstwhile member of the Black Panthers, will perform at the Hollywood Bowl, L.A. on July 26,2024!
Tell me something good!
(Song written by Stevie Wonder and originally performed with her band Rufus, heard a million years ago when I still attended live concerts…)
This is probably one of the poems I love most, for so many reasons. The way it shifts between description and evaluation, the former showing an outsider’s perspective, the latter a relationship to another human being as well as a yearning for some form of grace. The tenderness with which a seemingly “crazy” act is put into perspective, disambiguated as a form of loving, is striking. We so often, scared to death by the perceived reality of losing our minds, rather distance ourselves from crazy behavior, instead of finding some remaining value in it. Oliver also acknowledges that we cannot count on (or control) a particular way of aging, but might be blessed – either avoiding dementia or finding a light within. A frightful admission and her unswerving insistence on finding hope, as in so much of her work.
There is a German saying that age brings out either the cow or the goat in women. The former is supposed to be a hefty, placid, friendly, not particularly flexible form of being. The latter has more the qualities of what English speakers would call “catty” a nervous, snippy, mean and often stubborn crone. Folk wisdom like this is wrong as often as it is right, or contains at least partial kernel of truths, as all stereotypes do. Fact is, despite an explosion of research into aging across the last decades we, as scientists as well, know very few things for sure.
We do know that the brain parts that regulate inhibition of behaviors are affected early on. The subsequent disinhibition might be relevant for becoming “a goat,” bitterness and anger now more expressed.
There seems to be overall agreement, that although personality traits remain relatively stable across the life span (UNLESS dementia occurs, which can completely change your personality without your fault) some traits seem to get a bit stronger age, and others diminish. Of the “Big Five” personality traits, agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability seem to be getting a lift with maturation. Two other traits do decline with age – a general openness to experiences, and both facets of extraversion, social vitality and social dominance. (Ref.) Personality and aging interacts – some of us have an easier go accepting the hardship of aging than others. Personality resources such as self-esteem, perceived control, self-efficacy and resilience shape the person’s response to adversity in later life, not surprisingly.
What else do we know? Some of our long-held beliefs – for example that older people display a positivity bias and are better at emotional regulation compared to younger ones – are now questioned. New insights have found that contemporary old people are cognitively much better off than their peers who were born 20 years earlier, when tested at the same age. This is not because we somehow managed to delay the onset of age-dependent decline or because we decline more slowly across the years. Rather, we have been overall, across our lifespan, cognitively strengthened with better education, technological use, wider access to information, and that overall improved performance is giving us some slack to cover up the early signs of decline with age.
There is a whole enterprise exploring the biology of aging to help with prevention, progression and prognosis of disease and disability. It is a two way street – aging is a risk factor for developing chronic disease, but diseases also hasten aging.
There is a body of work dedicated to better understand the effects of personal, interpersonal, and societal factors on aging, including the mechanisms through which these factors exert their effects. Research is looking into the interaction between behavior (lifestyle)social, psychological and economic factors, as well as the timing of intervention during critical periods in a person’s life span where the course is set, and the effect of place (there are geographic aspects that impact aging.)
Researchers are interested in looking a population differences, to see where disparities need to be tackled, and also how we can improve our understanding of the consequences of an aging society to inform intervention development and policy decisions.
They got their work cut out for them. Whether potential answers enable us to improve our empathic responses to people living with dementia, or help us to prepare better for our own decline, I cannot tell.
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways — the point, however, is to change it.” Happy birthday, Karl Marx!
Today’s missive is sent to you by the “totally useless facts that are nonetheless interesting”- department of Heuer’s brain. It won’t change the world, but then I don’t have to try to do that every single day….
Lots of chatter in the media about how many people have gone grey or even white during the last year of Covid-induced isolation. Stress? Unavailability of hair dye? Presence of decisions to chuck the hair dye while in semi-privacy during the time of annoying grey hair roots? Normal processes of aging? Take your pick.
(Photographs, from 2 days ago, were chosen to depict white in all its pigment-free beauty in the floral world…)
My hair turned greyish-white almost two decades ago, with the original blond color gone down the drain with the rest of the actual hair during chemotherapy. It was somewhat expected since cell damage incurred by chemo was surely systemic. Why should the stem cells surrounding the hair follicles be exempt? It didn’t bug me much – in contrast to the fact that my 2021 medical adventures have led to severe hair loss, which bugs me to no end. Oh, vanity.
It was certainly not the “turned white overnight” experience, also known as the Marie Antoinette effect, after the lore that the doomed aristocrat had a sudden loss of hair color before her execution. The medical literature, if perused across the last 200 years, contains about 87 or so reports of these kinds of cases, some observed by doctors, some handed down by self report. Some are coming directly from contemporary witnesses, as this journalist writing up her own story quite recently. In a wonderfully dry humor kind of way, I might add.
So what’s going on with those 100.00 hair follicles on our scalp? We no longer have to resort to spooky interpretations. A Harvard research team recently published an article in Nature that explains how we lose the pigment production that gives our hair its color.
Aging is indeed a major factor – the responsible cells for pigmentation die off, and hair that grows without color simply appears white. But stress does a number as well, although in ways different from what was hypothesized along the way.
Early on it was believed that perhaps stress-induced immune system attacks might kill off the melanocyte stem cells. Nope.
Perhaps elevated levels of the stress-hormone cortisol doing the damage? Nope.
The culprit was found within the sympathetic nervous system – a system that contains nerves to help us navigate danger, often by releasing norepinephrine which strengthens the flight or fight responses. These high levels of norepinephrine, instead of stimulating a few of the pigment-producing stem cells, triggered basically all of them, to the point where they spent all their energy, with none left to continue to do the job since we have only so many of them in our reservoir.
Bye, bye pigment. Hello gray hair. Now it’s the luck of the draw if you live in a society that abhors aging and its visible signs, or that reveres the signs of aging as evidence for wisdom to be shared.
As an added personal observation from someone who is quite visually oriented – gray hair looks so much better than dyed hair on older people for one simple reason: it is less contrasty with aging skin that has also lost some of its bloom, and can appear waxy when set off by dark locks. Just saying…..
And here is a song about all the things that are worse than gray hair during the process of getting old. Luckily for us, it is in French, so you don’t have to get depressed on a sunny, warm Wednesday morning. But if you insist, here is the version with english subtitles.
I have visibly aged by about 100 years in the last month, through fear, worry, helplessness. No wonder then, that a project called The Beauty of Age caught my attention. I was taken not only by the portraiture of numerous people all above 75 years of age, photographed with a gentle lens and loving perception.
It was for me all about the approach to the project which explicitly combined a focus on the photographic portrait with attention to the life experiences behind the faces, the at times unbearable suffering that put my own anguish in perspective.
Laura Zalenga, a young European photographer, supported by the Adobe Creative Residency program, spent 2018/19 interviewing more than 30 people in Germany. Here is her description of the project (my translation from the German.)
“The project contains hundreds of photographs, weeks of listening and more than 2000 years of combined life experience. None of these statistics can capture though the gift these encounters. The wonderful people I met. We laughed together, sat silently with each other, cried softly. I heard so many beautiful, stunning, horrible, funny and sad stories. I sensed such aliveness. Such power and pain and contentedness, so much quietude, loneliness and courage. There is much to discover and learn if we allow the oldest of our societies to say their piece. If we afford them a bit of our hectic time, they return to us a piece of their wisdom, bear witness to our own history and express much gratitude.”
The work, as displayed in traveling exhibition, is a combination of the pictures of the faces and written quotes from the conversations, printed alongside the portraits. A companion book to the exhibition provides more detail.
What struck me, when perusing the photographs in The Beauty of Age was something practically all of the portraits had in common: they pulled their emotional weight without the visual tricks and forced stylishness of so much contemporary portrait photography. Not that the artist doesn’t know how to: she is on top of the contemporary demand for slickness as much as any of the big names these day.
In her project with the aged, however, Zalenga, in her 20s at the time, saw with the heart – she has, I predict, a clearly marked path to success in this image saturated world. These were mostly naturally lit snaps of people in their living rooms or other personal environments. Perhaps because of the naturalness of the approach the photographer captured something essential that is not always there when the sitter is too aware of and tense in the image-taking situation. I am thinking here of the mildness of the gaze. Look at all of their eyes, their expression – softness abounds, despite the hardships in their lives.
What an optimistic thought – we all might be able to come out un-hardened at the other end of life’s crises. I cling to that, while turning my back to the mirror.
This will be my self portrait, then, in the near future….
And here is the Marshallin from Rosenkavalier singing about getting old…
“Some consider death as a landing; others see it as a point of lift-off.” — Darrell Grant, musician, speaking at a Compassion & Choice, Oregon event.
Darrell Grant
The topic of death appeared twice in my view last week. In one instance it concerned death with dignity. It looked like anything but, in the other.
*
The cramped office at Street Roots was crowded by news media cameras, various Multnomah County politicians and Tri-County Health Officer Dr. Lewis for this year’s introduction of the Domicile Unknown Report. Published by Multnomah County and Street Roots, the report tracks the annual deaths of those living without housing, with data gathered by Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury, Dr. Lewis and Chief Medical Examiner Kimberly DiLeo.
Media at Street Roots office
For 2018 the statistics were grim – 92 people in Multnomah County died without having an address and that is not necessarily counting all those who passed while admitted to hospitals. 11% died by homicide, a few more than 10% by suicide, and only a smidgen over 50% of the deaths involved drugs or alcohol. The average age for the 22 women among them was 43 years. Cold killed. Disease killed. Houselessness killed.
Death, in thought or in reality, is never far away from those living on the streets, they who face violence, they whose belongings, medications included, are taken away when the garbage trucks sweep in, they who will not take antibiotics prescribed for medical conditions because they fear diarrhea in the absence of public bathrooms or the opportunity to launder clothes. These deaths are not landings, they are crash landings, utterly avoidable like so many crashes if preventative safety measures were available. These must include accessible housing, medical care and debt re -structuring, given that debt (originating from health costs for so many) drove them into an unhoused existence in the first place.
Multnomah County officials and Street Roots staff
Maybe the planned Downtown Behavioral Health Resource Center will diminish the current rate of deaths: a place, in the words of Street Roots’ executive director Kaia Sand, where people can exist, with the spirit of hospitality and the possibility of extra support. Maybe our compassion rather than irritation will lead to individual actions that help combat houselessness. We have that choice.
*
Death as a point of lift-off might become the reality for some of the rest of us who live in a state where courageous individuals and organizations have fought long and hard to provide wind in the sails for a gentle(r), pain-free, self-directed take-off.
I had been invited to attend Wednesday’s fall fundraiser of Compassion & Choices by Susan Prior, Senior Manager of Development and Stewardship, who I happened to meet at the house of a former Board member of the organization. I am glad I accepted the invitation from this warm and energetic woman.
Susan Prior with guest
I usually avoid events at the posh Multnomah Athletic Club, with their waste of food during luxurious meals, where people surreptitiously look at their watch (at lunch) or are straining with small-talk (dinner) until it is time to whip out the checkbook. This time was different.
Buffets with small refreshments, sort of like tapas bars, allowed inconspicuous consumption. Time wasn’t wasted either. After a few minutes of meet&greet the program started with one interesting speaker after another.
Former Governor Barbara Roberts with friend Andrea Meyer
My declared preference of “give me the facts already” was immediately met. Indeed, I was facing a lot of new, complex information beyond what I knew about the goals and accomplishments of the organization: improving options for compassionate dying and assuring patients’ rights to make end-of-life choices in accordance with their values and beliefs.
Kim Callinan, the Chief Executive Officer of Compassion & Choices, reiterated the major gains: so far six states have authorized medical aid in dying and 21 national and state medical societies have dropped their opposition to Death-with Dignity legislation. All of us, including those who would never consider aid-in-dying as a possibility due to faith-based or moral reasons, have benefited from the movement. End-of life care has radically changed as a result of the movement, being more devoted to palliative measures, and more inclusive of patients’ wishes.
Kim Callinan
Instead of seeing death as a medicalized event requiring all available methods to prolong life, medicine now eases the process of dying with hospice care, palliative pain management and, most drastically, the possibility of aiding in the passing of terminally ill patients. In some ways this has de-stigmatized what was previously considered suicide, a moral aberration for many. Aid-in-dying shortens a life expected to end soon; for instance, Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act stipulates that patients must have a prognosis of less than six months to live. It is not a choice of life over death, then, but one kind of death rather than another – one that implies agency by the patient and abbreviates incredible suffering.
The cultural shift towards the patient rather than the medical establishment as the decider, has been of seismic proportions. According to Callinan, the next effort will be to reach out African American and Latino populations to share the potential benefits of this movement. Generally, there is the need to spread the word that Advanced Planning and written-out directives to honor ones decision are of utmost importance.
This became clear during the address of Barbara Combs Lee, whose book Finish Strong – Putting YOUR Priorities first at Life’s End was the inspiration for a set of new tools and resource guide to help plan for end-of-life care. You can download a planning guide here, that provides help with assessment of your values, your options, and means of communication with those who will be caring for you. It also outlines provisions for the painful case of having to prepare for the advent of advanced dementia after an Alzheimer or other dementia diagnosis.
I strongly recommend looking at the guide – I found it valuable both for the information it offers about what problems one might face as well as for the solutions that are proposed.
Dan Winter, who serves on the Board of Directors for the ACLU in Oregon, gave a testimonial at the fundraiser that left me impressed as well. It is not everyday that you see someone with the courage to describe the suffering of a parent living, endlessly, with dementia and now, early, having an Alzheimer diagnosis themselves, prompting them to think about end of life care.
Dan Winter in conversation with Paul Meyer, one of the co-founders of the ACLU in Oregon in 1955
I understand the reasoning that you want to preserve what you consider your dignity and not live for endless years in a husk when your former self has long departed in spirit. I also understand that we are dealing here with a medical situation that centers on acts of omission – not providing life-prologuing measures like antibiotic treatment in case of infections, or not forcing food when the patient is refusing to open their mouth or eat anything – rather than the act of commission of providing the means to a clear-minded, consenting adult wishes to ingest to end suffering.
Betsy Moss who was celebrated as Volunteer of the Year
And yet – how do we assess whether the patient really wants to die, when a certain stage of dementia is reached? How do we ensure that those who are proxy decision makers can be trusted? How do we interpret temporary refusal of foods as more than temporary? History has no shortage of slippery-slope abuses – as a German I am exceedingly sensitive to issues of euthanasia. Moreover, a normatively functioning adult often assumes that non-normative forms of existence must be horrible – when we know now from a host of insights from the communities living with (severe) disabilities, that that is not so and rich lives can be led.
I am not saying that an existence with dementia is a rich life, don’t get me wrong. But I am asking about the importance of considering the subjective experience that a patient can no longer communicate, but which might diverge from what we think they must feel. It seems contradictory to put such stress on agency in the process of dying – something I wholeheartedly agree with – and then minimize it when the cognitive tool kit is somehow different from our own.
The Rev. Madison T. Shockley II, who managed to asked for money with humor and graciousness, not easily done.
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I don’t have answers, fully aware that, from my current perspective, I do not wish to live for years with advanced dementia either. I do remember vividly from my volunteering days at a local hospice (now closed) that there are some kinds of pain that cannot be treated no matter how advanced medicine is these days; having an option to escape that kind of pain is a gift for many and does not devalue life, in my opinion. I also remember that the incredible nurses who were surrounded by and easing daily lift-off’s as I now like to think of death, always imbued agency to the timing of death. If the patient died before the family arrived,”they wanted solitude, or they wanted to spare them.” If they died right after the family arrived,”they waited until they were there.” If they died at the end of a long night of being surrounded by one’s loved ones,”they were ready to go and let people go on with their lives.” I think the notion of having some control in the one event every single one of us will never be able to escape is a comforting thought. Rather than focussing on the mechanics of inevitably failing organs, we can attend to the power of our spirit. The lasting dilemma will be when that spirit no longer has words to communicate, and when it is safe to assume it has lifted off before the body could follow.
It is good that there are organizations grappling with these issues and offering advocacy as much as a forum for thought and discussion. We are richer for it.
Akamai Brah means very smart pal in Hawaiian. I have one of those, although this Hawaiian has long since been transplanted to the US mainland. Not only is he smart, but he is also one of the most adaptable and generous guys on the planet. Steve Tilden and I have been friends for over a decade and he has been a role model for me when it comes to working collaboratively on art and figuring out ways to manage when the ability to make art crawls into temporary hiding places for whatever reasons.
As a metal sculptor Steve has made a name for himself for his beautiful creations of both abstract work and, close to his heart, works representing Greek mythology.
A longstanding member of Blackfish Gallery, a cooperative art gallery here in town, he has not just drawn crowds to his shows. He has also been an integral part of the team that make all exhibitions possible, lending his technical skills and innovative fix-it talent to everything needed to bring complicated shows and installations to the walls.http://www.blackfish.com
His house and studio in North Portland, built by himself according to his specified needs, is like Ali Baba’s cave – a treasure trove where ever your eyes wander. Except no Open Sesame password needed: all you have to do is stand in the door, and he welcomes you in.
That has been true for many artists in Portland who were instructed by him, lent space by him or offered collaboration by him, so many that I have lost count. I do count myself among them, though. Not only have we done work together, I also have a place there where I can put a brush to canvas, without being ridiculed for my feeble attempts at painting. Below is a series of montages that he made possible by allowing me access to a commercial kitchen of his son’s who runs some terrific restaurants in town, including Olympic Provisions.
Steve is a renaissance man when it comes to the number of skills, passions and interests he exhibits; you’d never know, given his modesty. Having an abundance of interests, though, has helped him adapt when some recent eye problems started to interfere with the most important craft for his art: welding is no longer an option. Wait until you see what his artistic brain produces next….in the meantime, he is mentoring young artists and shares his studio space that is sometimes like a hive, with coming and going, and you can all but hear the combined creativity buzzing in the air.
Tilden has also extensively worked with Jen Fuller, a glass artist, depicting mythological figures, see my photographs below.
On average days he teaches you something new, on good days he lends a shoulder to cry on and on really good days you can hear him playing the guitar and sing old Hawaiian songs, or plain folk music. Most importantly, though, every day he models how to approach aging when this or that capacity is deserting you: with courage, with flexibility, with a certain wistfulness that refuses to morph into self pity. Mo bettah!
On Monday I reported on young artists working for change, on Tuesday on a long-ago icon being subjected to change, and today I am turning to someone who completely changed her life. Dr. Neena Roumell is the mother of one of my closest friends. Trained in developmental psychology by Barry Brazelton among others, she worked for large parts of her life with infants and their parents in the Detroit, MI area and authored books on fathers and infant attachment.
Recently married, she and her husband Atto Assi, a petroleum engineer from the Ivory Coast, decided in 2007 to pack everything up and move to Hawaii to start a self-sustaining farm. Now in her early 80s, Neena looks back at a decade + of adventure, learning, hard, hard work and incredible achievements.
Upon arrival the two cleared the 25 acres they had purchased from remnants of sugar cane and shrubbery, with their own physical labor as everything else they did. They built a house and water purification systems run by solar power, distilling drinking water. They also constructed a green house, that provides zucchini, strawberries, tomatoes, cucumbers and numerous other fruits; together with an extended vegetable garden, and citrus and banana plants, they have their own basic food supply covered. I am trying to imagine tending to the gardens in a climate that drops 200 inches of rain annually on the Big Island….wimping out right there.
Next they planted 3500 oil palms, with the original seeds provided by the former Dean of the College of Agriculture at UH Hilo, who shared their interest in growing fuel crops to make the islands fuel-independent. Crushing the seeds provides bio-fuel, as do left-over restaurant oils with an extraction method devised by Atto. At peak, they can produce 240 gallons of bio-fuel per day. Trucks, tractors and generators are all covered by their yield, the rest is sold. Neena also wrote grants that received USDA support for their conservation efforts, helping them to set up the next big project:
A piggery!
Pigs are an essential staple of the Hawaiian diet and there used to be thousands of pig farming operations on the islands. The industry shrunk to next to nothing because of the smells associated with the trade and the incredibly unhealthy run-offs contaminating soil and water, and so most meat has to be imported, at high cost. There is a new movement now, however, joined by Neena and Atto, that reconnects to traditional Korean natural farming, a method that eliminates both odor and run-off problem. The approach uses IMOs, indigenous microorganisms, that break down the waste when combined with solar positioning and natural ventilation for drying and cooling. Details here: https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2014/02/10/hawaii-news/pioneering-piggery/
Key elements are a mix of homemade bacteria solutions applied to beds of organic mulch and logs that generate heat during the fermentation of the waste products, which is funneled off naturally. The beds stay dry, the piglets are snug and warm. The piglets are also fed a homemade diet of agricultural waste, algae, academia nuts, purple potatoes, papayas and tapioca. What started with 70 pigs is now a growing operation of hundreds, planned to peak at 1000.
Our pioneering farmers so far have only had occasional help, including numerous Wwoofers (WWOOF is a worldwide movement linking volunteers with organic farmers and growers to promote cultural and educational experiences based on trust and non-monetary exchange, thereby helping to build a sustainable, global community.) They are now hiring help, given how the farm has grown.
I don’t aspire to be a newly minted farmer in my 80s. I do, however, hope to have the pioneering spirit and physical strength to try out novel ways of being at any age that remains to me. I also hope to visit Hawaii at some point in time to take photographs myself. Today’s images are either sent by Neena or depict pigs that crossed my way stateside.
Since it has cooled down a bit today I can safely introduce you to something, no, someone really hot.
Meet Inge Ginsberg, 96-year old Holocaust survivor, who calls herself the oldest rapper in history, also known as the death-metal-grandma. Before you wonder, check out the clip below which gives you a 10 minute documentary on a remarkable woman.
She fled the Nazis, escaping through the mountains to Switzerland, almost freezing to death. She and her husband eventually emigrated to the States where they were writers and composers of music in Hollywood for a while, known for songs performed by Dean Martin, Doris Day and others.
She left Hollywood after it struck her as fake, started writing poetry and, in somewhat advanced age, performing in competitions and public places so her wisdom would be heard, aphorisms like “Don’t destroy what you can’t replace,” or “Wake up and stop acting like sheep – see what’s going on around you.” (Which reminds me: have you heard about the newest Austrian #FPÖ legislative proposal to register Jews? To be able to buy kosher meat you have to register a n d prove that you are running a kosher household. How about something on your coat lapel to prove that you are registered when you enter the butcher shop? And while we’re at it, why not for halal meat buyers as well? Yellow for one, green for the other?) Let’s stop acting like sheep….
In any event, Ginsberg, dividing her time between NYC and Switzerland, truly lives by her own concept of heaven and hell: “If at the moment of your death you decide your life was good and full, that is heaven. If you feel you should have done this or that and didn’t, that is hell.” (I am happy to announce that, if I keeled over in 5 minutes, I’d see heaven….)
She surely leaves nothing out – the latest was an attempt to participate in America has Talent – unfortunately she forgot all the words to her rap song at the audition – but she tried. LET US ALL BE THAT TOUGH IN OUR 90S!!!!!!!
Today my mother would have been 94 and my grandfather Eduard 120. In my wishful thinking he is playing Mozart on his stand-up bass while she is re-designing the garden of Eden, white hair luminous under the stars.
For me graceful aging has always included an acceptance of what nature provides. Nature is fickle, though, and few of us can boast that truly beautiful hair color, pure white.
It might not really matter, though, as long as your face is expressive and your spirits are up, never mind a body that doesn’t betray you by being sick.
I am also happy to report that your approach to aging might increase your defenses against dementia – the more positive you feel – embedded in a culture that is more respectful and accepting of age – the lower your risk to develop the disease.
Avoiding disputes like the one linked to below is probably also good for your health – who cares if our lifespan can be extended beyond 115 years??? I surely don’t want to be around during peak global warming….
“…I have changed/I am a dandelion puffball blur. My hair,/scribbles of white lines. My face. Lines/crisscross and zigzag my face./My eyes. I am looking into eyes/whose color has turned lighter, hazy brown./Wind and time are blowing me out.”
