Morning Walk

As many of you know, my every-day morning practice is to walk to a neighbor’s house where several of us like-minded loafers gather for morning coffee. The walk is normally a pleasant traipse along a paved road through the woods with the neighborhood birds offering summertime serenades. I am pig-headed enough to insist on my walk independent of the weather and time of year. Even when it snows most days and the road is unplowed, I insist on my free coffee. On the occasions of unplowed snow, I find myself a little less buoyant during coffee and downright grumpy by the time I arrive home. The reason: the pleasant walk becomes a tiresome trudge as I negotiate a path through the snow. Of course, I try to find the easiest path; following whatever car tracks allow the least amount of foot lifting over the mounded snow.

 

 

I don’t normally complain about the lack of vehicle traffic down my road. My isolated neighborhood with but a few scattered permanent residents among a handful of cottages has little traffic most days and I like that. Except in winter. When the snowplow is too busy clearing major roads, the lack of car tracks down my road is a definite disadvantage for a walker. During the holiday, our sparse traffic was even lighter, often with nothing more than a single tire track in the snow. My trudge became a balancing act as the track forced me to place each foot in front of the other, a gait for which I am unsuited. Even the recall of a Christmas Carol that coursed through my brain wasn’t enough to distract me. Just before arriving home, I had crated my revised tune and in my agitated state of mind I decided to uncaringly thrust it upon those of you who have so little to do that you are willing to read my scribblings. If you decide to finish it, let me know.

 

Recite the following aloud to the tune of ‘Jingle Bells Jingle bells, jingle all the way, O what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh … ‘

 

“Wintertime, wintertime, winter every day,

O my Lord, it snowed again for my walk down the roadway, hey

Find a track, find a path, trudge thru the mounded snow,

O my Lord this is hard, as down the road I go.”

 

Happy Holidays

After a too-short absence, the long underwear season has again crept up on those of us left in northern Michigan. We hardy souls who haven’t escaped the north woods for warmer climes, are now relegated to spending our time in front of our wood stoves except for those brief moments when it is necessary to leave our warm perches to fetch more firewood. Sitting in front of the fire is a good time for me to reflect on my accomplishments of the past year. Unlike the other loafers that I drink coffee with most mornings, I try to use winter’s downtime to accomplish something. Some of my coffee-drinking buddies would argue that they too spend their time wisely, especially if you count solving 500 piece puzzles as a worthwhile accomplishment.

I never liked puzzles. During numerous coffee hours, I have sat silently gritting my teeth while my friends wrestled with the little pieces searching for a fit to complete a picture. It wasn’t until recently that I attempted to complete a puzzle on my own in the privacy of my home office. Almost miraculously, I finished a puzzle on my first try! Not only did I finish, I completed an entire puzzle in a single day of hard work. This, despite the fact that the box said 2 to 3 years.

The puzzle was not my only victory of the year. This year Marjorie and I also learned how to play pickleball. In case you aren’t familiar with this relatively new game, pickleball is a racquet sport played on a court that is smaller than a tennis court – about the size of a badminton court, I’m told. Pickleball is a game like tennis, only easier and with smaller racquets and less running. I call it tennis for old folks. The game was named after a dog – an animal named Pickles. Not only did I learn the game, I also learned about sore hamstrings, tired abdominals, and sore shoulders while Marjorie is learning about sore knees. We have played pickleball often enough this year to understand that flexibility, stamina and strength are fond recollections from a misspent youth.

We had an enjoyable year of travel this past year with a 10-day wintertime venture to Florida and frequent camping trips during the warm weather months. Our last camping trip was around Lake Superior in late September. The scenery was outstanding and we were buoyed by the wonderful support of all the Canadians we met who universally offered their assurances that they would not build a wall to keep us out of their country no matter how foolish our politicians become. It seemed a kind sentiment

Marjorie and I want to wish you a happy holiday season; hoping that you will secure pleasure not only from the joys of Christmas, but also from the excitement of the changing season. We think winter is a time of beauty: snow blankets everything in the north woods and icicles grow to impossible lengths while nature takes a needed break to rejuvenate for springtime. We hope to follow suit by relaxing during the holidays and striving for inner peace that is both a prerequisite and result of a happy holiday.

Here’s to you and yours during this happy time. MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR

Thinking Younger

 

I just had a birthday, last week to be exact, and this year my birthday coincided with election day. I was unhappily forced to share my day in the sun with the presidential candidates and a whole raft of other politicians who wanted to shoulder their way to the public trough. As my birthday waned, the election returns filtered in over the long night and I found myself thinking about my mental age versus my actual physical age. That line of thought provoked an inevitable comparison of my age and psyche with that of our new president-elect Donald Trump. My mental age, I concluded, is somewhat older than our new president-elect even though our physical ages are comparable with me being just a tad older. It seemed to me that during the campaign Trump acted like a thirteen-year old whereas I assessed my maturity somewhat higher -perhaps about the age where young men just begin to think about consequences of irrational behavior. What I mean is, sometimes I act like a kid, but not all the time. And I like it.

The election seemed to show that childish behavior isn’t all bad. Since outrageousness paid off so richly for Donald Trump, I decided that from now on, I am going to cultivate being young again. I decided to begin by counting down instead of up on each of my birthdays. And not just by a year or two, I am thinking to reduce my age by five or ten years at a clip. Soon, I’ll be wearing short pants again.

I have already started practicing on getting younger. This week I got a brand-new bike – a real humdinger that will allow me to roam the neighborhood with abandon. As if to add an exclamation point to my enthusiasm for youth, yesterday, I installed a fancy new toolkit on the bike’s saddle that looks really rad. And today, I attached a carry-all bag over the rear tire where I can keep a cold one, new sunglasses and whatever else I need to look cool while I pedal to the soda shop…er, make that the bakery since we don’t have a soda shop. I may put my new high-top tennis shoes in the bag also just in case I need them to complete my young man attire. If you think that is too much, you should know that I do have certain standards; OMG no comb-overs nor orange face paint since I earned my wrinkles and hair loss honestly.

Do you think streamers on the handlebar grips of new bike is too much? LOL.

 

Signed:

Your Ever-Young Friend Who Thinks Silliness is a Virtue

New Eyes

 

 

Early this year my optometrist told me that he could no longer improve my vision by new spectacles since I had cataracts. He said my cataracts were bad enough that I qualified for cataract surgery and that I should think about having it done if I wanted to see better. It was an easy call; I wanted to see better. With an abundance of caution, I decided to discuss the surgery option with friends before blindly jumping into it.

“Nothing to it,” and “No big deal,” seemed to be the most common response from those I talked with who had experienced cataract surgery, some 70% of us at my age. I got the sense that having cataract surgery was a simple matter, something I could have done in an afternoon perhaps, maybe with a recovery period of an hour or so before enjoying new eyes with sparkling new vision. My brother said it was like a night and day experience when the surgery was completed. I confidently made an appointment for my surgery. I chose a leading eye care firm in Traverse City that featured two surgeons and a large staff that occupied offices full of high technology equipment.

It turns out my friends were wrong – the surgery for replacing my old cloudy lens WAS a big deal requiring deliberation and patience. At my first appointment, I had to make a decision; did I want the surgery performed by the white-haired physician who did everything by hand, or did I want the hot-shot young sawbones who seemed to have just gotten out of medical school, the one who used the latest laser assisted surgical tool “for improved comfort and precision,” the advertising pamphlet said. Of course, his surgery came with a premium cost whereas the old codger apparently plugged along with his scalpels and scraped by with whatever stipends Medicare saw fit to provide him. I was leaning toward favoring the old scalpel-wielding medic since he was nearer my age. The decision was finally sealed for me when I learned the old codger didn’t use the latest lens that would correct both my close-up and longer distant vison.

“Of course, that is the premium cost package requiring the use of high technology that only Doctor Youngblood can provide,” the head nurse told me. I got out my checkbook. I would be at the mercy of a clinician who had just learned to shave but was apparently authorized to point a high-powered laser at my eyeball and then turn it on. The nurse went on to tell me the schedule for my surgery. The first surgery could be scheduled as soon as my check cleared their bank account and my physician gave me a thorough physical exam offering his view of my chances for survival of the eye surgery. Then I would take eye drops for two days before the first surgery could occur. The following day I would return for a check-up, and then another a week later, and then another after two more weeks. Assuming each of these check-ups showed that my eye health was positive, she said she would schedule the 2^nd surgery for my other eye, after my second personal check cleared their bank, of course. So much for the one afternoon theory of cataract surgery.

My first appointment was four hours long, about the same amount of time Donald Trump used to plan his year-long campaign. Both my eyes were examined in sufficient detail to plan the surgery. The nurses dosed my eyes with eye drops and then made me look through a variety of eyepieces to see glowing lights, radiating circles, little roads with dots at the end of them and other images that somehow were translated into measurements of my eyeballs. According to one of the nurses, these measurements would be used to manufacture tiny lens custom-built for my eyes. At the end of my first appointment, the nurse gave me a schedule that I was to follow before and after my eye surgery. The schedule was for using eye drops: one an antibiotic and the other a steroid. I tried to tell the lady I am not good with eye drops. They shock of putting cold medicine directly on my eyeball has always been my idea of not having a real good time, especially since the schedule required dosing each eye some 360 times over the course of the 4 week schedule. The head nurse ignored my comment about eye drops and gave the eye drop prescription and schedule to wife Marjorie, she who has little sympathy for my squimishness.

A week later the first lens was ready for Doctor Skillful to install in my left eye, the one with the best vision. The surgery was uneventful, although I must report that I had some misgivings when the Doctor’s anesthetist strapped down my arms before rolling me into the surgical room. She told me not to worry; she would be right beside me during surgery, ready with more drugs if I needed them. If she intended to reassure me she had the opposite affect – all I could imagine was this woman lying beside me during surgery, giggling at my distress courtesy of the drugs she was sharing.

After the surgical team finished strapping me in place, Doctor Happyface began his business of slicing my eyeball with the powerful laser and then forcing a new lens into my mutilated eyeball. He began by installing a device like a spider web over my surgical eye to keep it from writhing about in its socket and prevent my eyelid from closing. It could not have been a pleasant sensation but the anesthetist and I didn’t mind. After that, everything went dark when doctor draped a covering over my other eye and began humming a tune that I vaguely recalled as ‘happy days are here again.’

 

Everything was blurry when the surgical team insisted I leave their surgical room for the next victim. I left with an eye patch over my left eye, and a blurry 20/40 view from my right eye without my glasses. After my surgery, I arranged to have the left lens from my spectacles removed to allow its use with the eye patch. I put on my now mutilated spectacles – my left eye with an eye patch that made everything blurry and my right eye peering thru spectacles with only a single lens.  Strangely, the right lens seemed no longer effective in helping correct the vision in my right eye; everything was blurry. It seemed as though my left eye with its new lens was now interfering with the vision in my right eye. Who knew your eyes could talk to each other?

The surgical center told me I could resume my normal schedule. They didn’t tell me my eye would be sore, that I would have diminished depth perception, that sleeping with a hard plastic eye patch taped over a sore eye was a pain in the … you know.

Over the next several days the surgical eye got better, but not perfect. I was allowed to remove the eye patch and I tried using my spectacles again but they didn’t return my vision to its former clarity. Oddly enough, my right eye became better at seeing things close up than before surgery but my left eye was too sore to notice so that things like reading or seeing a pickle ball was still difficult.

It has been three weeks and 300 eye drops since the surgery on my left eye. I can hardly wait for the surgery on my right eye that will restore my balance and depth perception, prevent the night time glare and allow me to read my computer. The final surgery is scheduled for tomorrow. I look forward to enjoying the full benefit of improved vision with the realization that having cataract surgery IS a big deal whose benefits will surely be worth the travails of surgery.

PS -I just learned that my surgery for tomorrow has been cancelled. The nurse said their  laser is on the Fritz and can I please come next week for my surgery.

I’ll talk to you later.

Bill

 

Columbus Day 2016

Columbus Day

 

Today, October 12, 2016 is Columbus Day – a national holiday that began in New York City in 1792 as a means to honor the Italian population of our young nation in the city of New York. No doubt the decision to honor Columbus via a national holiday was aided by the poem that we all learned in grade school: ‘In 14 hundred 92 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.’

The rest of the poem goes like this,

               In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue,

               He had three ships and sailed from Spain,

               He sailed through sunshine wind and rain.

               He sailed by night, he sailed by day;

               He used the stars to find his way …”

 

The poem generally lauds Columbus and his sailors for their courage, nautical skills, and newfound knowledge that the earth was round, not flat. Surely, the poem seems to say, the great sailor Columbus is deserving of a hero’s acclamation. None of us who were born before 1950 had any reason to doubt the veracity of the poem and/or the wisdom of a national holiday honoring the great sailor that began in 1937. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Congress ordered the holiday, bowing to lobbying by the Knights of Columbus, who wanted a Catholic hero to be honored.

 

Now, there is a movement afoot to change Columbus Day. Some radicals wish to abandon this national holiday and replace it with a day honoring native Americans. What? Shall we lose another of our sacred heroes and send him to the scrap heap? Is this another instance of a cultural change which provokes professional football players to sit during the national anthem? It must surely be a liberal plot to … (you supply the reason).

 

Before we get upset about the loss of another beloved national symbol, a review of the facts is in order. First of all, historians tell us that Columbus never set foot in North America. His four voyages to the New World in 1492, 1493, 1498 and 1502 landed him in the Bahamas, Central and South America, not North America. Nevertheless, Columbus was first in what began as a whirlwind of European visits to the New World. (Indians would call them invasions, not visits.) Certainly Columbus’ trips were historic -indeed, his trips provoked in a change human history, ushering in what is known as the Columbian Exchange — the historic exchange of plants, animals, disease, culture, technology and people between the Old and New Worlds. The Old World, for example, got gold, chocolate, tobacco, corn and other plants while the New World got wheat, bubonic plague, chickenpox, cholera, malaria, measles, smallpox, typhoid, and other diseases, all of which decimated the populations of native Americans.

 

For his part, Columbus profited mightily from his voyages. He returned with gold for the King of Spain that he stole from the indigenous people in the New World. He obtained the gold by force, killing and maiming natives and forcing them to bring the gold to his fleet. After they complied, he put them in chains and threw them in the holds of his ships to sell them as slaves upon his return to Spain. This turned out to be only partially successful – many of the natives died during the long voyage since Columbus was stingy with food and water. He threw those who died overboard plus any other living Indians that didn’t meet with his approval. Each of his four voyages was marked by increasingly savage treatment of natives that he incorrectly labeled as Indians since he thought he had sailed to India, not the New World.

               Even by the standards of the time, Columbus’ behavior was abhorrent, and by today’s measures both criminal and cruel in extreme. His notoriety for being the first to the New World is now known to be wrong – he was preceded by at least 500 years by Vikings who visited North America first. Sadly, Columbus voyage marked the beginning of a series of European invasions by armed warriors who laid waste to indigenous peoples wherever they met them. It is time that we end the charade of honoring a sadistic leader who brought so much misery to so many.

              

Gardening 'R Me

Gardening ‘R  Me

 

 

You may know that I fancy myself a gardener, i.e., one of those hobbyists who digs holes in his lawn and puts money in them. Or at least it seems that way, especially if you count the holes around my house that should have something beneficial growing in them, but don’t. Since August is here and most of the growing season is behind us, it is the time of year when we gardeners brag about the number and size of our tomatoes, or other growing successes, so here is my report. Before I get into the details, I need to give some explanatory information about gardening in the North Woods, in other words, I’ll now give excuses for my little tomatoes that are few in number.

First of all, you should know that there are three types of soils: good soil for growing things, bad soil for growing things, and horrible soil for just about anything. My soil is in the third category. It is most like beach sand – terrible for growing anything, but the only soil I have. I have better soil at the Memorial Garden I manage at our Methodist church. It is gravel, the kind that contractors have left over from building projects, but it is what I have to deal with at the church. It is better than beach sand, but not by much. The good thing about the church garden is that the grassy area surrounding my garden includes a sprinkler system that waters most of my garden, the Lord be praised.

The new thing I added to the church garden last fall is an extension to the original garden for burying cremains. This portion of the garden is at the farthest end of the garden, accessible by an extension of the paved walk with the circular sunrise pattern in the center. The burial area is separated from the other area of the garden by the generous supply of black mulch. The mulch surrounds two crabapple trees, two hydrangeas, and an assortment of large rocks that I artfully placed in the mulched area. The sidewalk is graced by four urns. I plan to keep track of who is buried where by putting the ashes in the gravel under the rocks. As long as no one steals the rocks, I’ll know where everyone is interred.

The church garden seems to be doing OK this year. I have lots of flowers that are putting on a nice show, including two tomato plants that I stuck in two of the urns that feature wave petunias. So far, I haven’t buried anyone, their cremains, that is. I am hoping that soon someone will pass on and bequeath a generous donation for the church garden allowing me to dig a hole and push the deceased into eternity.

My gardens at home are another matter. We have suffered a prolonged drought this summer and it shows. I have spent lots of time in watering the plants, but each time I leave for a few days the gardens suffer. Another significant problem this year is the lack of a bobcat or fox who will help control my rabbit, chipmunk, and squirrel population. These critters have been especially hungry this year, both with my vegetables and now my flowers. I would also like to announce that marigolds don’t discourage critters from entering gardens – I know this since many of them have themselves been eaten. Until this year, I also didn’t know that squirrels liked acai berries until I watched them eat mine.

So those are the high points of my gardening report for this year. But just as hope springs eternal, I planted several new native plants this year in the expectation that they will be easier to grow if I can get them through this year’s drought. I’ll let you know next year.

Ready, Go! (Never Mush)

Who says us septuagenarians are too old to learn? It is amazing what we grandparents can take in as result of grandkids. Today, I took my two granddaughters (ages 11 and 9) to the library for a presentation by an honest-to-God musher and learned enough to be dangerous. If your reading habits allow a walk on the slippery path of odd facts, read on to learn another set of reasons that those folks who live in the colder climes are sometimes considered to have flickering pilot lights.

First of all, for you low-landers, a musher is one who drives a dogsled through the wilderness along snow and ice covered trails; just for fun, nowadays, but an essential mode of transportation before roads and airplanes became the passing fancy that they now are. The speaker at out library today is indeed a musher. She and her husband live in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula where the snow is deep. They have  Alaskan Huskies for pulling sleds – 150 of the four legged critters to be exact, that they use for their dogsledding business and their yearly entry in the Iditarod race.

 

Here is Roo, an 11-year-old Alaskan Husky who happens to be one of her favorites who led her team of Huskies during her last Iditarod race. She explained that the 45-pound female Roo is a little smaller than her typical male Huskies at 60 pounds who pull in a team of 16 dogs during the Iditarod, a race over 1,000 miles and several days long where the dogs and the musher spend each night on the trail, regardless of the weather. She explained how the musher feeds and cares for the dogs during the race with one of the important tasks being to inspect their paws and replace their booties that last no more than 100 miles, requiring her to carry dozens of replacement booties during the race.

 

The lead dogs are the most important; they set the pace, listen for direction from the musher, and keep the other dogs in motion. The musher’s motto and main job is NEVER LET GO of the sled. The dog team likes to run and absent an immediate command to the lead dog, the team will run away, perhaps become lost, and the musher will have a long and perhaps dangerous walk as she looks for her runaway team. Racing through the mountains is particularly hazardous especially if the trail has ruts or a protruding rocks or trees that can upset the sled. Our speaker showed one picture of herself being dragged down a mountain trail as she held on with one hand to an overturned sled and a runaway team.

The lead dogs must distinguish the musher’s voice amid the cacophony of barking dogs. The beginning of a race is somewhat dangerous for the musher since the dogs are excited for the start and anxious to run. The musher must have a firm grip on the sled when she shouts, “Readeeey, Go!”, because the sled is going to jump forward with the force of 16 dogs pulling with all their might. After that, only four other commands are needed during a race: Gee, Haw, Eeeasy, and Whoa!

The dogs are the athletes of a dog world. They develop stamina through practice and their double layer of fur helps keep them warm and allows sleep even when covered with snow and only a thin layer of straw for a bed. The musher told us that if she had brought straw to the library, Roo would have made his bed and went to sleep since he has heard her presentation several times.

The lady musher explained that her kennel of dogs varies in number between 120 to 180 dogs as new pups are constantly in the offing. She said that the hard-working dogs push their bodies to extremes like female human athletes and, like humans, have consequent low birth rates. She sells excess dogs and retires older ones, making Roo one of the few older animals still working even though she spends less time on the trail and now only for shorter runs. The musher explained that her business includes offering trail rides to tourists on a year-round basis and she has four handlers who see that each of her dogs is examined and exercised daily. The musher personally clips dog nails, sometimes a thousand in a single day. And I thought doing my toenails was hard.

It turns out that mushers do a lot of stuff with big dogs that us ordinary folks would think unusual. My granddaughters now know all about that, probably more than me and that’s why they can answer more Jeopardy questions. I plan to spend more time in the library.

Want more about mushers? Here is address of the Michigan musher who spoke at our library: www.natureskennel.com