The Joys and Challenges of Aging

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I turned 85 recently, one of those milestones that gets extra attention. This milestone marks the impending end stage of a long and satisfying collection of experiences and companions. There were rewarding achievements and instructive failures, teaching and learning, giving and receiving, reading and writing, caregiving and being cared for, leading and following, taking hold and letting go. Your list may be very different, because my list includes not only family and friends work and communities but also my specific personal experiences, gifts, dreams,  challenges and opportunities.

Many (but not all) of my readers are close to my age, We grew to adulthood in the time of the Cold War, The Pill, Vietnam, Civil Rights, the women’s movement. That context affected us all in different ways, depending on all the dimensions of being that each of us brought to our shared historical and cultural environment. Even if you are from a later generation, you probably have people in your life  who are at this stage and whom you are perhaps trying to understand.

Like everyone else, some big parts f my life were beyond my control. I was female, poor, white, academically gifted and artistically/musically/athletically challenged, a  mainstream Protestant in a sea of ethnic Catholics, growing up in a single parent household in a New England factory town where my ancestors had lived for generations and where extended family still did. Each of those aspects of my identity shaped my hopes, fears, aspirations and constraints.

But so did my choices. The determination to go to college and figure out how to pay for it. My choice of a husband, a wise decision apparently made by my right brain. Becoming an economist. Changing my political identification. Having three children intentionally. Changing my faith identification. Getting involved leadership roles in a variety of communities. Writing textbooks. Running for city council. Writing non-textbooks. Preaching.  Retiring early (and also late). Going to seminary after retiring to study theological ethics.

The last part of life has unique challenges of its own. Hinduism recognizes four stages: the child, the student, the householder (including the work to which one has been elected or assigned), and what we Westerners would call retirement–the time to give up the focus on duties and possessions and  turn to matters of the spirit.

Our challenges in an individualistic society are similar but also different at this final stage. At my age, I am definitely in that fourth stage. But as a daughter of western culture, I think there is still a role for work, meaning and purpose in those as well  as  adapting to our changing roles and abilities. final years.

 I identify four kinds of tasks or challenges for the final years.  Let’s call them Bucket List, Letting Go, Staying Engaged, and Legacy. The next four blogs will each focus on one of those challenges. I would appreciate you sending your comment or stories in response!

Friends, Enemies, and Revolutions Revised

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I love to blog about holidays. Some months have no obvious choice for what holiday to celebrate, but July is easy. Two related but very different revolutions, American and French, officially began in July, one by a document and one by the execution of the ruling monarchs. Both were motivated by oppressive rulers and taxes. One was started by distant colonists from the more prosperous and educated classes while the other was a violent protest by the poor over taxes and poverty amidst the conspicuous extravagance of the ruling classes..  One link that tied the two revolutions together was the assistance from  the Marquis de Lafayette and the eventual French support of the Americans against the British. A member of the aristocracy, he was killed during the Reign of Terror.

A second much needed and unappreciated resource was the fierce fighters from the Appalachian colonists, the Scots-Irish, They played an important role in many of the later battles , most of which were fought in the South. The end came in Yorktown, Virginia, when French strategy and brave Scots-Irish solders brought about the surrender of British general Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781.

 he Scots-Irish and the French both had scores to settle with England.  The roots of animosity between the English and the Scots and Irish were long and deep. France and England had wavered between friend and enemy for several centuries, but by the 1770s there was competition between France and Britain for control of North America. France also had strong ties to Scotland when it was a separate nation until the early 1600s

Lafayette helped Washington in many ways as the war moved south and engaged the French government to near bankruptcy and heavy taxes, resulting in a violent revolution in1789. Unlike our own revolution, the Storming of the Bastille on July 14th it did lead to democracy but to the reign of terror and eventually Napoleon. In 2018, when American forces liberated Paris, General Pershing announced, “Lafayette, we are her,e.”

Acknowledging the role of these allies that helped win our revolution suggests two important lessons.  .  First, sometimes the best place to find friends is among the enemies of your enemy,  as long as you can appeal to their self-interest..  The French could offer money, supplies, and military experience that they hoped would in turn  help them against the British in Canada and in their Southern beachhead in Louisiana and beyond. The Scots-Irish wanted to get rid of the hayed English and throw in their lot with the colonialists. In his book, Born Free, former Virginia senator James Webb documents the critical role of these Indian-style guerilla warriors played in battles like Cowpens, King’s Mountain and Yorktown in ending the war.

So as we leave the 4th of Jul;y and approach Bastille Day, July 14th,let us pause to give thanks to both our French allies and our Scots-Irish immigrants who contributed so much to the birth of a nation. We could not have succeeded without their help. We all get by with a little help from our friends.

The Dirty Refrigerator

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Long ago, when I was teaching introductory economics, (  would begi the study about how we make choices about how to use our limited resources of time and money. Eventually we would get to more complicated questions, but I would begin with the dirty refrigerator problem. The inspiration for this example came from two weddings and thfee friends.

My youngest daughter was getting married on Saturday. It was Tuesday, and my daughter’s future in-laws were arriving in about 12 hours. They were planning to host a rehearsal dinner at my house and I was madly getting the house ready. Then I got a distress call from work. My colleague was supposed to give a speech in Myrtle Beach, but he had called in sick.  They asked if he could send the speech and they would read it . Apparently, he hadn’t written one. To save our Institute’s reputation, I agreed to write a speech for him, but I had procrastinated too long with my least favorite household task, cleaning the refrigerator. Three of my friends asked how they could help.  Everything is clean, I said, except the refrigerator. They busied themselves with reading expiration dates and filling the trash bag and scrubbing while I retreated to my home office  and wrote the speech.

          .Fast forward to my middle daughter’s wedding. I had left the refrigerator till last once again. The wedding was on Saturday. On Thursday evening. the groom was waving his arms in a fit of Italian exuberance and accidentally knocked his bride off a low wall, leaving her with a sprained ankle. The two of them were scheduled to go to the baker to sample some cakes before finalizing the order.  He wanted her to rest up and hoped that “Doctor Mom” could do that with him. Once again, I had procrastinated on cleaning the refrigerator and the as my three friends came to the rescue.  The only price I paid was years of teasing thereafter.

Back in the classroom, I invited their suggestions. Clean it now? Clean it later? Leave it dirty? Beg or pay for someone to do it for you? Swap it for a different favor?  It was agreed that the new refrigerator was not a good solution, but the other options were worth considering, weighing the costs and benefits of each.

A second family refrigerator even made me expand the possibilities.  My mother was moving from her mobile home to assisted living, and my sister had come to town to help me get ready to sell her home.  She opted, to my great relief, to tackle the refrigerator, Our mother had many great qualities, but housekeeping was never one of them. My sister’s husband  was career army., She had learned housekeeping as an army wife. When she finished after about three hours it could have gone on a showroom floor. My housekeeping standards lay in between. So the question was not binary, to clean or not to clean, but whom to charge with the task and how clean do you want it to be,

Even a simple question of cleaning the refrigerator is nonbinary (more than one option), contextual), and has a range of options about how clean and how much time or money or return favors are you willing to spend?

I am thinking a lot these days about nonbinary choices as well as the contexts in which they occur. If you have any good stories, please share

Celebrating the Solstice

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This essay is a repeat of last year’s solstice blog with an addendum.

Next Sunday is both Father’s Day and the summer solstice, the longest day of the year.  In Australia, New Zealand, and most of South America, it is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year.  There they huddle before a warm fire at this solstice and celebrate the December solstice at the beach. Here in the Northwest quadrant of the globe, we have picnics and celebrate Fathers’ Day. Why is Fathers’ Day so closely connected to the summer solstice? Perhaps because, in Celtic mythology, the sun God is at the peak of his powers, even as the mother Goddess is pregnant with his child who will be born at the winter solstice. After the solstice, the Sun God begins a long descent into aging and death before being reborn in December.

The four sky holidays (equinoxes and solstices) are celebrated with bonfires—spring at dawn, summer at midday, autumn at dusk, winter at midnight.  Do these times of day remind you of Easter, (sunrise service), Fourth of July picnics (two weeks past the summer solstice), Trick or treat (five weeks past the fall equinox), and midnight mass (winter solstice)? If so, you have penetrated the Celtic roots of some of our non-biblical religious and secular customs of honoring the rhythm of the earth.

The ancient Celts, from whom many Americans trace their descent, observed eight evenly spaced holidays.  Solstices and equinoxes were dictated by the rotation of the earth around the sun, while the four cross-quarter holidays were earth-centered. Males were associated with sun and sky, women with moon and earth.

We modern humans are largely disconnected from these rhythms of earth and sky, with air-conditioned buildings and food from the grocery store that can be frozen or refrigerated.  We can eat blueberries and watermelon year-round even if it means shipping them long distance from Chile or other points far south. Change of clothing is one of the few acknowledgements we make of changing seasons as we swap coats and sweaters for T-shirts and bathing suits.

And yet the pull of the rhythm of the seasons is still strong. The urge to plant is evident in the spring, even if we are more often planting for beauty than for sustenance. Recreation moves outdoors in the warm summer months, while long winter nights are a time to huddle in front of the fireplace, alternating with snow sports in the short daytimes in more northern parts of the hemisphere.  We can try to insulate ourselves from nature, but we are in fact a part of nature and our bodies and hearts pulsate to its changes. We are also dependent on nature for all the resources that sustain us—food, and water, and electricity, and fossil fuels, metals and minerals,  plants and animals.

Each season brings us different gifts of both beauty and sustenance, challenge and opportunity.  If a single word unites these eight ancient holidays into a common thread, it should probably be gratitude.  Gratitude for rain and sun, soil and water, food and fuel, beauty and wonder. Eight chances to count your blessings and honor Mother Earth and Father Sky.  A joyous summer solstice to all my readers!

Another message can be derived from the Sky God’s story of growth and decline.  For humans, the cycle from birth to peak to decline and death is much shorter. Unlike the Sun God, we do not know what happens after death. Somewhere between the perpetually recurring cycle of the Sun God and mere mortals lie the rise and fall of empires. From Egyptian to Persian, Greek and Roman to Persian, Ottoman and British, not to mention empires of the Far East, all have risen, had their time in glory, and declined. During that peak in most empires, there were many wars, great inequality, suppression of citizens’ rights, and corruption. Less ambitious nations content to dwell within their parameters have often but not always fared better. Will this be the fate of the American empire, and what nation or nations wait in the wings to succeed us?

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Ten Lessons from a Broken Wrist

~ purplesage41 ~ 3 Comments

40 days ago, I tripped over something that wasn’t supposed to be lying in the middle of the street in Chicago. I suffered multiple injuries but the most serious was a broken radius and ulna in my right wrist. I had broken that same wrist ten years earlier, but this was much more serious.

Every experience can teach us something.

  1. If you must break a wrist, aim for the non-dominant hand. Both times I broke the right wrist. I am left-handed.
  2. Orthopedic surgeons are my new best friends.
  3. Everything is twice as hard with just one sort of good hand (the left sustained less injury)., It gives a very different meaning to “single-handed.”
  4. Friends and family are vital for survival.
  5. I didn’t realize how much I count on being able to drive. I hate having to ask for rides, and I will bear that in mind when it happens to other people, especially those of us who live alone.
  6. Our bones do become more fragile with age.
  7. Teeth can serve as a spare hand.
  8. Putting on underwear and pants is a challenge, T-shirt dresses and elastic waist skirts are a blessing.
  9. 9.Fentanyl while they reset my bones created entertaining hallucinations.
  10. Stay grateful long enough to pass it forward.

Beltane: Roots and Wings

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Beltane (May 1st) is an ancient Celtic holiday, a celebration of fertility as spring gets underway.  It still bears echoes in May poles (a mating dance) and May flowers, but in its ancient Celtic time people were encouraged to couple in the fields as an invitation to plants and animals to be fruitful and multiply. As we multiply, we need to give our children sturdy roots, and when the time is right, bless their wings and let them fly away.  Children need both roots and wings—roots to make them feel safe and give them a “starter” identity, wings to fly to new places and ways of being in the world.

Seven years ago, I went to my 60th high school reunion in Torrington, Connecticut.  It was my first reunion ever. and one of few visits to my hometown after graduating from college and getting married. My sister, my mother and my brother were all living elsewhere.  In 1959, my mother’s the youngest child, I had spread my wings and fled Torrington into the richer soil of academia, first in Storrs at UConn, then in South Carolina as a Clemson professor. I wasn’t coming back.

Torrington is an old town full of dead factories and new housing developments.  My family on both sides has lived there for many generations. Aunts, uncles and cousins dotted the landscape.  I picked apples in my grandfather’s orchard and attended the annual family reunion with people I rarely saw at any other time..  I grew up in the church of my maternal ancestors and was married there. At the Congregational church we sang from the Pilgrim Hymnal and attended Pilgrim Fellowship in high school. We knew who we were, In a town that was heavily populated by Catholics—Polish, Irish, but mostly Italian, we were New England Yankees, Protestant, hard-working, private, frugal, often unimaginative, cautious. 

Torrington High School’s Class of 1959 reunion was a surprisingly pleasant; warm welcome, old familiar faces, catching up on everyone’s past.  I was assured that I was so smart and they knew I would do great things—me, Alan, and Carol, the three nerds at the top of the class.  Later that weekend I visited UConn with my college roommate to recall where my wings first landed me, Unlike Torrington, UConn had changed.  We sought out the few familiar landmarks–the skating pond, the Congregational church.  Our old dorm still bore the same name but had been updated, as did”The Jungle,” a group of men’s dorms where my future husband was living in 1959.

My mother gave me roots, but she didn’t think wings were such a good idea. I could go to the local branch of UConn, she said.  No, I said, I’m going to the main campus.  You can be a teacher, a nurse, or a secretary, she said.  I think I’ll be an engineer, I replied. (That was shortly after Sputnik.)  But being rooted in time and space among ancestors and hills, relatives and neighbors gave me the confidence to sprout wings. They eventually flew me to marriage and an adult life as an economics professor in faraway South Carolina. There I repotted myself and put down new roots, which in turn provided soil for my three daughters– home town, high school friends (they regularly attend reunions), second cousins and a grandmother who moved here ten years after I did.  They still enjoy visiting their hometown.  One daughter, two sons-in-law, and two granddaughters are Clemson grads and tiger fans. My oldest daughter moved away, saying she was too liberal to live in the South, but after adventures in Charlotte and Dallas she would up back in Clemson, working for Clemson as a graphic designer. Another daughter lives a few hours away in Aiken SC, while the third developed big wings that took her to many places before settling in New Jersey.

There are no Congregational churches in the area, so I became first a Lutheran and then a Unitarian Universalist, a faith community that shares a history and a liberal approach to religion with my ancestral faith. I learned how to respectfully hold onto and affirm my worldview while treating those of others with respect. I let my daughters choose their colleges (within some financial limits) and their majors—an economist and a physicist looking on in wonder as they grew into an artist, a musician, and a librarian/photographer.

I am grateful for my roots and my wings, and I am pleased that my daughters return to their roots while also spreading their wings.   I wish the same for every child.

Thanks, Mom!

~ purplesage41 ~ 1 Comment

It’s Mother’s Day for every living being on earth.  Some of us remember as children celebrating Mother’s Day by making breakfast in bed or taking over some daily chores. Or making a card.  What can we do for our mother Gaia, the earth, today?

We can stop treating our mother the way the boy in Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree did.  Haven’t read it? It’s a good place to start your reflection on the primrose path from modest requests to exploitation.

All mothers like flowers (except for some with allergies…).  Plant something that b\blooms.  Plant something that invites bees and butterflies to visit your yard. A bird bath for her feathered children.  No mosquito spraying or toxic herbicides—birds eat mosquitos but shouldn’t drink water that has been sprayed, and dogs and cats roam in grass that is contaminated and harmful to those sprays.     While you are at it, plant a small vegetable garden (or a large one, if you have time to spare) that is organic in every way.  Organic fertilizer. Mushroom compost.  Space permitting, plant a tree, Gaia will be proud of you.

There are other ways in which you can gift your earth mother-–less pollution from fossil fuels, lower the thermostat in our shared house by resisting or reversing climate change in partners with other mother-loving tree huggers.  Hassle hour city council about mosquito spraying and other toxic practices.  Push them for bike paths and sidewalks. streets and more public transportation.

At night, try to enjoy your canopy of starry sky, but it may be hard to see if for all the light pollution.  Can you turn down the lights a little so we can see the earth, and the sound pollution so we can hear the birds?

Thanks, Mother Gaia.  We hope we have come up with some gifts that will last all year and beyond for your grandchildren and outs.

Celebrating (?) Income Tax Day

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Thursday, April 15th, is the day to settle accounts with the federal government.  It used to be March 15th, but since Congress itself can never produce a budget by October 1st (used to be July 1st), our legislators blessed us with our very own procrastination opportunity. They also blessed many of us middle class folks by eliminating  the incentive to itemize. A big $17,000 standard deduction for a single person, $32,000 for a couple discourages itemizing.. It takes a lot of charity, medical bills and state taxes to claim that much, and it makes filing faster and easier.  The current income tax code also thoughtfully discarded the exemption for dependents, thus discouraging taxpayers from having children that the nation would have to feed and educate.  (At least the government doesn’t have to vaccinate them anymore.)

If we don’t celebrate sales tax day, or property tax day, or tariff day what’s so special about the income tax?  The answer is that it is the only tax that doesn’t demand a larger share of their income from the poor than the rich.  It is less progressive than it used to be but more progressive than any other tax.  In fact, most of the sources of federal, state and local tax revenue are regressive. Progressive means your tax bill is a larger share of your income as you move up the income scale.  Regressive taxes take a smaller share of your income as your income rises

Forty-one other states use income taxes, but mostare less progressive because they want to be atracitive to business location and high-income residents. are not very progressive—in fact, many of them have flat rates, and only some kind of standard deduction makes these states a little bit progressive.  The mainstay of many states (45) revenue systems is the retail sales tax..

The sales tax is regressive for two reasons.  First, poor people spend all of their income, rich people don’t. The part the rich salt away to invest or at least save does not pay any sales tax.  Second, even if the rich spend their money they spend more on services, and states tend to tax more tangible goods and relatively few

Think about being rich. There are limits to how much you can consume of food and clothing, but no end to the services you can enjoy. (Think gardeners, nannies, house cleaners, hairdressers, life coaches, tutoring for your wayward children, travel..)  Also, sales taxes of all kinds—regular sales tax, gasoline tax, alcohol tax, tobacco tax, tariffs, are all paid in small amounts in our daily rounds. They add up, but they never show up as visibly as   income tax withholding from your paycheck the end of the week or month. The income tax is not exactly a model of fairness, but we have to pay for government services somehow, and it is the least unfair of all the kinds of taxes humans have invented.  With that less than ringing endorsement, I invite you to gather your paper and visit your computer or your tax person and make your confession of what you owe the government,

Four Strong Women of the Distant Past

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During Wone’s Herstory Week, I would like to share some of my favorite very historical women with you, all role models for 21st century feminist seeking to reclaim their heritage.  Two of them you most certainly have heard of and the other two, maybe not.  In chronological order, they are Boudicca, Hypatia, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Joan of Arc, or in her native French, Jeanne d’Arc.

Boudicca was queen of the Iceni, a Celtric tribe of western Britain during Roman rule, born in 60 or 61 CE.  Her husband had signed a will leaving his kingdom half to his widow and half to Rome.  Rome wasn’t satisfied.   In fact, they expressed their dissatisfaction by raping Boudicca’s daughters and flogging the queen in public. Outraged, Boudicca raised an army, captured Londinium (London), and defeated the Roman army a second time before losing the third and final battle.  She took poison rather than being paraded through Rome and being thrown to the lions.

Hypatia was a scholar, an astronomer, mathematician and philosopher who taught and wrote and studied in “Alexandria, Egypt in the late 4th and early 5th centuries before the fall of Rome. It was extremely rare for a woman to be found in such an exalted scholarly role. Although she was a pagan, she had cordial relations with the Christians and taught both pagan and Christian students.  She was renowned as a teacher. In March 415, she was attacked and murdered by a band of angry Christians.

Our second queen was Eleanor of Aquitaine, born in 1124 CE. She was first married to the dauphin of France and, after annulment, to Henry II of England, Henry was 11 years younger than Eleanor. It was a stormy marriage. He spent much time abroad fighting and she took care of the kingdom and her eight children in his absence.  When he returned, she supported an unsuccessful attempt by her sons to overthrow their father. Outraged, Henry imprisoned Eleanor for 15 years until his death in 1189. She returned to her ancestral lands of Aquitaine and lived there until her death in 1206, the only one of the four to die a natural death.

Joan of Arc was born in 1412 CE in the little French town of Domremy.  A17-year-old peasant girl, she heard voices telling her to go to the aid of the uncrowned  French king Charles VII. She put on armor and set off  to meet the king, who believed her story and sent her to lead the French army against the Burgundians, French allies of the invading English. The King must be crowned in Orleans.  Defeating the Burgundians, she accompanied Charles to his coronation.  However, things took a turn for the worst, and in a subseuqnt battle she was captured by the Burgundians, who forced her to wear women’s clothing, tried her for  heresy, and burned her a the stake in the town of Rouen at the tender age of 19. Her Hershey conviction was later overturned. The patron saint of France, Joan was canonized by the Catholic church in 1920. The second Sunday in May (Mothers’ Day in the United States) is dedicated in France to honoring the nation’s patron saint.

As I watched NCAAW basketball playoffs this week, I hope the young women who played so well know that they come from log line of strong, brave, accomplished women who made a difference in the world.

Celebrate the Women

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March is Women’s History month, a practice started in the United States in 1897 and joined by Australia (starting in 2000), Canada, the United Kingdom, Russia, Hungary and Ukraine. We do have to share the month with the spring equinox and Saint Patrick’s Day, but it’s still a good time to recall a little “herstory” as we celebrate the women who made a difference in significant ways.  Before we do that, however, I want to remind you of a practice that has help to hide or erase history, and that is the common practice of women changing their last name to their husband’s. Remember the old song about “I’ll be with you in apple Blossom time ,I’ll be with you to change your name to m…,” The name change was for a long time just the tip of the iceberg.  Married women were the property of their husbands, who also owned the kids, her assets, her earnings. As they sing in the musical “Suffs”, a women dies when she gets married. She has ceased to exist as a separate person.

 Most of that changed since the suffragists caught the car they were chasing for 72 years and climbed in the back seat in 1920, but the name change is still a widely common practice in more recent years. I changed my name in 1962.  Two of my daughters did the same in 1993 and 1994, and in 2022 so did one of my grandchildren. My oldest daughter who still lives in our hometown told me only partly in jest that her decision to change her name was not only to acquire a name that was easier to spell and pronounce than Ulbrich but also one that would keep her from always being identified with her somewhat outspoken, activist mother.

There is also the challenge of connecting children to both parents, which is easier if the parents share a last name. Hyphenation is an awkward solution, especially in subsequent generations. What last name would you give to the offspring of Joseph Hall- Berwyck and Annabelle Shultz-Foster?   Where do we go next?

But now there is a new reason to NOT change your name.  If you want to be able to vote, get a credit card in your own name, get a passport, or a variety of other things you just might want to do, it is a whole lot simpler for you to do like your brother or your son or your spouse and just say, “This is me. I was named Susan Smith on the day I was born and I’m keeping that name till I die.  No, dear, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you.  But how can I love someone else if I don’t love myself enough to affirm separateness in togetherness?

Having a clear record of name changes since birth is pretty important.  Especially if you married and divorced and changed your name again.   had a grandmother whose name was Gladys Lillian Barber Hewitt Schultz Rockefeller. She carried her whole marital history on her shoulders.

Norse culture had a solution of sorts to the dilemma of family identification and the right to one’s own name.  If Susan Ingridsdottir and John Larson married, their male children would have the last name Johson and their female children would bear the surname Susansdottir. Only siblings of the same gender would share a surname .It might work in a small culture, but probably not in one as large and diverse as ours. And it relies too much on first names which results in a smaller pool of surnames.

So there is a simple solution.  Here’s your name, kid.  My infant great grandchild). .Mabel Kay Didio, bears her father’s surname. At age three weeks, she has no opinion, but she might develop one.  Got a problem with it?  Complain to your parents or hire a lawyer and change it, just like a movie star. Or find a husband with a last name you like better.   But don’t expect the Board of Elections to trust you unless you go through all those papers around the house to provide proof of name when you want to exercise your duty and privilege of choosing the people who run your country.

In subsequent blogs, I am going to offer brief bios of a selection of female heroines I especially admire for defying convention and/or making a significant impact on the course of human evenes..  I invite you to share your own.  Next installment: will feature ancient and medieval women I admire—Hypatia, Boudicca, Joan of Arc, Eleanor of Aquitaine.