In bed with an author

Among the very best things about living alone is coming home at the end of a cacophonous day, closing the door to the rest of the world and having my space all to myself.

The next best thing about living alone is climbing into bed at night and getting lost in a good book (homage of Charles Dickens, Ray Bradbury, Jasper Fforde and so many others). Sometimes for 30 minutes and sometimes long into the night. I'm safe and sound and all tucked in with my book.

The other evening I finished a very nice Greek murder mystery by Anne Zouroudi. I'd only had a few chapters left. Dropping it to the floor in my "read" pile, I sorted through the unread stack and selected "One For the Books," a short little perspective on books from all angles by book lover and critic Joe Queenan.

To be honest, I haven't been in the mood lately for nonfiction or essays and was doubtful that I'd stick with it.

But almost immediately I found myself doing somethings while in a book that I haven't done in ages. Grabbing a pen to underline important ideas since I'd already decided this book would be among those I would be giving to one of my graduating students. Dog-earring pages where he mentioned authors and books I felt it necessary to add to my list. (I did suggest he might have included an index of books and authors to ease my task --- but you know writers. Suggestions are not always welcome.)

I read whole passages out loud because they deserved to be heard by me and my cats.

I laughed out loud. I teared up several times and especially at this from a favored librarian of his. --- "A library is not a business. A library is a miracle." (pg. 57)

By now, I'm hearing the author's voice and not reading aloud anymore. We are having

Joe Queenan

a serious conversation now...in bed.

He tells me how little interest he has in nonfiction and less in books foisted (gifted) on him by friends --- yet, he gifts books as do I.

His tastes run the gamut from the Classics to a contemporary page-turning thriller, with a very special place in his heart for French authors and writings because of the education and life experiences he gained there.

He mocks one of my favorite storytellers without naming him, who sets his murder mysteries in Laos and Southern Thailand, with a sort of a murder-mystery-is-a-murder-mystery-is-a-murder-mystery-regardless-of-setting kind of smirk. He misses, I think to myself too polite to argue with him, the socio-political, cultural tour that Colin Cotterill (and Zouroudi for that matter) takes me on including the touch of mysticism Cotterill weaves so entertainingly into his Dr. Siri Paiboun series. His loss I do bravely tell him loud enough to disturb a cat.

He knows the exact number of books he reads a week, a month, a year and often has as many as 30 going at one time. I look down at the piles of read and to-be-read books on the floor around my bed.

He reminds me why books will survive the Kindle.

“…[b]ooks are sacred vessels...are connective tissue. Books possess alchemical powers, imbued with the ability to turn ennui into ecstasy…We believe they have magical powers.

            “People who prefer e-books may find this baffling or silly. They think that books merely take up space. This is true, but so do your children and Prague and the Sistine Chapel.

            “I will never own an e-reader. A dimly remembered girl-friend’s handwriting will never take me by surprise in the Nook. A faded ticket to the Eiffel Tower will never fall out of a Kindle.” (239-240)

While packing books in my latest move, a handwritten note from a dearest friend who died recently fell out of a book I was discarding. Another included a picture of me and a lost love. My Eiffel Tower miracles.

He validates my disinterest in joining a book club:

“Book discussion clubs have almost nothing to do with reading. This may be why they so rarely choose good books. Participants are seeking unanimity, and good books do not invite unanimity. They invite discord, mayhem, know fights, blood feuds…A book is a series of arguments between the author and the reader, none of which the reader can possibly win. This is especially true if James Joyce is involved.” (44)

Unlike him, I rummage through used book stores and library book sales for what I’m after. (I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’d picked up his book for a buck at the Dollar Store.) I also tend to put books that don’t suck me in back into circulation through free lending libraries and donations to library book sales. Unlike him, most of the books that fill my study’s shelves are waiting to be read.

It’s nearly 6 a.m. by now and the conversation just keeps getting better and then he goes and does it. “I’m 61,” he tells me. “I’m in the autumn of my life.” 

The conversation comes to a screeching halt and what follows are some very awkward silences between us.

With the early morning birds waking in the trees outside of my window and an April breeze cooling my shoulder, I think, is he telling me that within a year, I am going from those spring fresh greens of 26 (I’m only 26) to the gold and red and orange leaves of fall that break away from the living tree to brownout, crumble and blow away? Autumn means that winter can’t be too far away.

I'm offended that he's mentioned my age and implied there might be an end to my days. As my late mother-in-law told us often, "I never intended to go," was what she wanted on her tombstone. I hope her family followed through on that.

His voice is lost to me now. I quietly read the final pages of the book alone.

Queenan knows the exact number of books in his home. He has calculated his life expectancy and the number of books he expects to get through before winter freezes over him. While it sounds well organized, it also sounds like surrender.

I never have nor will I ever stop to calculate the time I have left, neither will I prioritize a must read bucket list of books. As they come to me I will read them and read them and read them long into the rest of my nights.


Queenan, Joe, "One For The Books," Viking, 2012.

60 is the new 80 - ouch!

60 is the new 80.

At least that’s how I’ve felt these past few weeks due to crippling back spasms. The pain has been so stunning that I now understand why maturing individuals have a tendency to overdo drugs and alcohol.

As my 80-something aunt advised me just yesterday, “There’s a new ache somewhere almost every week.”

Most days, I’m a pack mule, lugging and toting the stuff I need without the benefit of a hand cart or other aid. If something has to be moved from here to there so be it. Size and weight be damned.

My spine, having been disrespected lo these many years, has developed a love/hate relationship with me. Years ago, it began bulging discs in retribution and for the thrill of the pain it could inflict --- chronically, thank you so very much. (I don’t know why we can’t work together but nooooooooo.)

I physical therapy. I Pilates. I yoga. I work on my core. Nothing’s ever enough for those discs, that spine, and the back that claims them.

And now this.

When it kicked in, I thought it was just a strain that would go away. It wasn’t. It hasn’t.

I’m waiting not so patiently now for an anonymous insurance company representative to weigh and measure the value of helping me over the cost savings to his/her employer by denying a referral to a pain management specialist.

I’m also on my second tier of pain killers and muscle relaxants since the first round of recommended drugs didn’t even hint at relief.

Eight years ago on the tail end of menopausal symptoms, I was suffering from such severe pain that I couldn’t focus to work. In there somewhere, I happened to have some strong alcoholic beverages, strictly for their entertainment value I assure you, but the relief was life altering. It was then that I understood what alcohol could do for those with chronic pain --- physical and emotional. After that, I was far more understanding of those “tipplers” among us. Finally understanding that some aches and pains simply do not go away because we demand it or swallow a couple of over-the-counter pain killers. Some pains are here to stay and perhaps foretell the future. Just the thought of that makes me ache.

Later, when the bulging discs added sciatica to their repertoire of painful entertainment, I was reminded of this earlier lesson. Although the pain is always with me, it seems best treated by movement and exercise rather than alcohol, which I continue to reserve for enjoyment…and escape ;-)

So, here I am again in total disagreement with my back. My online medical sleuthing offers nothing but hydration (I’m about to drowned already), heat and therapies out of my reach until someone else feels my pain and approves a therapy from some heavenly position of power.

These times don’t try my soul. They try my patience and tolerance for pain. They also remind me that there are more trying times ahead. The aging process naturally includes the slowing and breaking down of the body. While I can’t predict what’s next (my body tends to keep its conniving evil plots close to the vest), to protect the quality of life, I have to commit to pushing back at the body that tries to bully me into submission…and take a shot (of Tequila) from time to time. ;-)

April Fools: I fooled myself

I am my own April Fool.

After an absolutely frenetic Thursday from early morning to way past my dinnertime on the road, I arrived home thinking it was Friday and my weekend was ahead.

I couldn’t understand why none of my Thursday night TV favorites were in On Demand. I even wished a friend a “good weekend.”

Friday morning, I jumped out of bed (well, not really since I’m experiencing lower back muscle spasms), ah, got up slowly and early to run (OK, drive) to the credit union to be sure I got there before it closed as it does on Saturday, at noon. I went on to run my other regular Saturday errands.

Upon returning home, I settled in to do some homework before getting ready for my cousin’s wine tasting party that Saturday evening.

What I couldn’t figure out from the moment I had started my car to run the errands until about an hour into my homework was: Why is Michigan Radio running its weekday programming on a Saturday? I knew April 1 was April Fools Day and wondered if this was their joke to the listening audience but… So, as Diane Rehm started her second hour, I finally went out to the website to see what was up. To be fair, Michigan Radio has just recently altered it programming line-up but…for some reason, Michigan Radio had the date as FRIDAY, April 1.

I suddenly found myself with another day to add to my weekend. If I hadn’t been sitting down, I would have had to. I’ve been so crunched work-wise lately that I couldn’t process having an extra day to get all of the tasks done.

I simply couldn’t process this shocking excess. So I promptly took a nap. (That’s a Saturday thing too.)

I actually played an April Fools Day joke on myself and got away with it.

I know what you are thinking but you are wrong.

Clearly this is a mistake due to exhaustion, not, harrumph, age.

May your jokes be as successful! ;-)

Losing my frame of reference

I feel as if my life’s frame of reference is slipping out of my reach.

This isn’t a “time is passing so fast now” experience. It is one of context. The context that has shaped my life is forgotten or, in the case of my young students (born in 1996, sheesh!), has never ever been learned.

That younger people vaguely remember or don’t care even to learn about the life altering events of the past leaves me feeling diminished or inadequate somehow. As if what I have to share has no worth.

I feel like celluloid film that is drying up, cracking and turning to dust in my ignored tin. If all of that is lost, forgotten, ignored, underappreciated, what happens to the rest of me? The whole me?

My college journalism training began in the thick of Watergate. It’s a frame of reference --- context --- for anyone who studies investigative reporting, politics, and history. Yet, my students today, having been born two decades after the scandal, may have memorized Nixon’s name among all of the presidents in grade school, and perhaps they recall that he was forced to resign for something, but what is kind of hazy.

Watergate is as unknown to them as the “global village” theory of the 70s. You know, the global village they are now living in thanks to the Internet. (I have a student who travels daily to Spain to practice his Spanish via the application Periscope, where he talks to Spaniards and visits live lectures in Spanish and is able to interact with the speakers and other online audience members.)

In my lifetime, free citizens of African decent were still (are still) fighting and dying for the rights guaranteed to them 100 years before (Civil War) and even earlier in our Constitution. The knowledge that people around me, people I knew were not (are not) equally enjoying the privileges and protections of this country DID shape my life. Now, though, that’s just the stuff for some history books. Those who are not directly affected have no frame a reference for it, no context.

I recently pointed out to a media class that the FCC has determined the cable providers can no longer require customers to rent their cable boxes. If we do the monthly rental fee math for a life-time of rental fees we can easily figure out why these companies are making healthy profits. How much could one cable box really cost? U.S. Senators Edward Markey (D-MA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) reported last July, in preparation for the FCC decision, that the rental boxes are worth $19.5 billion a year to the cable industry. Hello! Seriously, how much could that box cost to make? Ars Technica, an online technology blog reports that the average household pays $232 a year on cable box rentals, suggesting that the boxes are well paid for even in the first year of rental. (Ars Technica, July 30, 2015)

My students weren’t shocked, offended or outraged by such a bilking of the viewing audience. Their response was to just stare at me as if wondering aloud why I would bring this up in a media class.

I’m the one who was shocked when I realized that these students have little or no frame of reference for cable boxes. They are the unplugged generation. They don’t have cable, so no cable boxes either. They get all of their media on smartphones, tablets and computers. For many, email is also a vintage idea having been replaced by texting and social media forms of communication with friends and family. Cable boxes are as foreign to these 20-somethings as are CD players and newspapers. Don’t even mention typewriters and record players. ;-)

Welcome to the generation gap, where the “when I was your age,” stories are not welcomed by the younger recipients because they have no frame of reference. Give it 40 years and they will be wishing they’d listened more closely.

It’s as if we are on slightly different plains with the generations that follow --- just enough off kilter and out of the frame that what we offer is too foreign for them to put into a context for their own understanding.

So here I am at an age when this epiphany can only happen and with no one younger willing to listen or able to understand the awareness that just smacked me in the face. No wonder bad history repeats itself. And what energy we are wasting on that repetition. We have the lessons just too few willing to learn them.

I’m pretty sure that all that’s left of me in my frame of reference is the bad profile side of my nose.

Hate, ageism and the 2016 presidential election

On Trump

I’m saddened by the hate expressed in my state last week as demonstrated by Trump’s sweep in the Republican primary. It was manifested again this week by the events in Chicago, where reports are genuinely upsetting and heartbreaking. Trump protesters faced verbal and physical assaults outside of the venue. At the same time the media replayed video from previous Trump appearances where he encouraged his followers to attack protesters and offered to pay their legal defense fees. Is this really who we want as our president? (Time.com, March 10, 2016)

NPR - Getty Images

“This Can’t Go On In Chicago,” Says Anti-Trump Protester,” NPR Weekend Edition, March 13, 2016

Listen to the disrespect this American suffered at the hands and minds of Trump supporters. Listen to his message. “America is great without the hate.”

On ageism and the presidency

Senior Planet

Those around me who think Bernie Sanders is too old to be president have captured my attention. He’s 74, Hillary’s 68 and the Donald Drumpf is 69. I don’t get it and apparently the youngest voters among us don’t get it either since they seem very comfortable with everything Bernie.

When Hillary started up her campaign machine again, so shortly after the 2012 election, “too old” was a common question and comment among the pundits. (“Is Hillary Clinton too old to be president?” MSNBC asked. ” Hillary is too old to run,” the New York Post claimed. Politico opinionator Pete Seat echoed the sentiment: ” Hillary Clinton is too old to be president.”) (Erica Manfred, Senior Planet: Aging with Attitude, May 28, 2015)

Senior Planet looked at this question in a great article: How Old is Too Old to be President? (May 28, 2015). In the article, the experts are split on the effects of age and office holding. Dr. Nir Barzilai, professor of medicine and genetics at Albert Einstein and director of the Institute for Aging Research, says, “biological and chronological age are not the same. The older you are, the more your genes rather than lifestyle are likely to predict longevity...Someone like Hillary, who functions at very high intensity, has the gene for longevity. “ Her mother died at 92.

Barzilai also points out that Alzheimer’s isn’t a forgone conclusion with age: “[t]he more educated and intelligent a person is, the less you’ll see the decline even if they have Alzheimer’s.” (According to Barzilai, if one of your parents lived to be over 85, your likelihood of getting Alzheimer’s is reduced by 25 percent, even if that parent had the disease.)

Also quoted in the article is Dr. Robert Epstein, a research psychologist and former editor in chief of Psychology Today. “As long as the candidate shows no signs of senility – say, from early Alzheimer’s – an older candidate is probably your best choice if you think the world is a fairly stable place. As we get older, our judgment regarding matters we know about generally gets better. Experience is a great teacher.”

But, Epstein says, “If you think the world is rapidly changing, that’s another story. The older we get, the harder it is for us to quickly learn, master and evaluate new information.”

The article goes on to point out that the issue for candidates today isn’t about age but about how visible they are to the voters through social media and how savvy their campaigns are in using these communication platforms to reach all of the voters.

Does age matter? You can vote 

Erica Manfred, the article’s author reports that the “jury is still out on age and the presidency.” You can vote on the site for how old is too old to be president. (at the bottom of the article)

No time to lose

Help! 

Somebody stole an hour from me while I slept last night! And I don’t have the time to lose!

Give it back!

Adding insult to injury. I have to be reminded of what I've lost as I run around the house resetting all of my clocks. That's just cruel. Crank me out of bed an hour early and leave all of the clean up work to me. Well, I never.....

A bi-partisan bill in the state seeks to eliminate the daylight savings time shifts twice a year. Sponsors of the bill, Rep. Pete Lucido, R-Shelby Township, and Rep. Jeff Irwin, D-Ann Arbor, cite educational, health and safety issues as the basis for the change, according to an interview on Michigan Public Radio (March 1, 2016)

We’ve been around long enough to remember daylight savings time (DST) taking effect in Michigan, but the process probably escaped us then.

According to Jeremiah Webster on MyMcKinley.com (March 8, 2013), Michigan and Arizona were the first states to exempt themselves from DST in 1967, but the exemption statute was suspended in June of that year when a referendum was invoked. From June 14 until October 1967, Michigan observed DST and did so through 1968. From 1969 – 1972, Michigan did not follow DST. A general election ballot issue, November 1968, sustained the exemption statute by a “close vote.” Michigan has observed DST since 1973.

Whatever the legislature and the grownups were doing at that time, all I remember is that it messed with the schedules of my TV programs. How was I ever going to keep track of the changes on all three channels! (I wasn’t into PBS yet.)

Like most people as well, I thought it had something to do with farming but indeed it has nothing to do with farming. Daylight Savings Time was first adopted to conserve electricity by Germany during World War I (History Channel, March 9, 2012).

But in recent years, studies have found that it no longer saves energy and there is an increase in car accidents and other health issues with each Spring Forward are Fall Back. Michigan Public Radio

Rep. Irwin suggests leaving us in Spring Forward mode to provide summer tourism with longer days to play under the Michigan sun and in its “salt free, shark free, no worries” waters. I say, good plan for those of us with pitchers full of ‘ritas who want the sunsets to last forever.

I can still Spring Forward on my ankles --- for get the knees --- but I’m not much interested anymore in Falling Backwards even if it is on my well padded bee-hind and thankfully not on my achy-breaky joints.

What’s your preference?

HBO’s Last Week Tonight weighs in DST in his “How Is This Still a Thing?” segment

Old Men Grooving

So you think you still can't dance huh?

Well, you still have the music in you.

Dance to the beat.

Let "Old Men Grooving" remind you how!

Old Men Grooving bust a move, and maybe their backs! - "Britain's Got Talent 2015"

Old Men Grooving  - Semi Finals - "Britain's Got Talent 2015"

Get your groove back.

Keep on keeping on. ;-)

Video's courtesy of "Britain's Got Talent" and YouTube