Goldilocks' Traveling Adventures

FWIS   Goldilocks’ Traveling Adventures  June12, 2014    Pat DeKok Spilseth

Tossing & turning in different beds every night while traveling is not my cup of tea.  My pillow may be too soft; the bed too hard; the sheets scratchy; not enough blankets to keep me warm.  Like Goldilocks, I ‘m fussy about my sleeping accommodations. 

On our road trip out west to Montana, Dakota, Wyoming, New Mexico and Mexico this month, I missed my daily routine.  My stomach wanted coffee, juice and cereal, muffins or an egg for breakfast before 8AM, a light lunch at noon and a hot meal around 6PM.  I’m used to regularity.  I prefer a scheduled life, humdrum though it may appear. 

No longer am I the adventurer who, on the spur of the moment, hit the open road looking for adventure.  I was part of that wacky twosome, Thelma & Louise, during college years in the 60‘s and into my thirties.   Now I’m a senior citizen.  I’ve traded traveling adventures for remaining at home with my books, music and family.  I’m content sitting on the deck overlooking the lake with Buddy, my friendly Beagle, in my lap.   I get my thrills reading the daily newspaper or a good mystery.

For me, traveling is hard work.  I hate early morning alarms rushing me to get on a 6AM flight, cramped airplane seats, no food on flights and no leg room.  Though I enjoy Dave’s traveling privileges flying, being on standby is no longer fun.  We used to plan our destination, but it was OK if we landed in a different place.  Didn’t matter: Disneyland or Philadelphia, Oslo or Amsterdam, Florida beaches or NYC, Paris or Milano...life was full of unexpected adventures.  I could handle that in my 20‘s, 30‘s and 40‘s.  

No longer. I don’t want to end up in Florida with bulky sweaters and boots or in San Francisco with only swimsuits and shorts.  I prefer some routine: a slightly modified schedule is OK, but not a total change of plans.  Last week we rose at 3AM to fly on a 6AM international flight from Mexico City to Dallas, got through customs, but got “bumped” three times trying to fly from Dallas to Mpls.   Flights were full!  Finally we arrived home in Mpls at 10PM.  That trip was too long and stressful.  I’m still tired.

Driving through our vast country, from MN to Dakota to Montana took us through lush lands of newly planted green crops, endless blue skies with puffy clouds, past bobbing oil rigs, towering silos, grazing cows and bison.  We drove Grandma Agnes’ Olds packed with suitcases and boxes toward towering mountains with wildflowers gracing the land.  Driving from Minnesota to Montana is a long haul, through Dakota’s Black Hills to Wyoming into Colorado and finally New Mexico.

Though I don’t remember being there, photos tell me that my folks took me to Mount Rushmore when I was a little girl.  Seeing the stoney faces of Washington Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln carved on the mountain filled Dave & me with patriotism, pride in my country.  

In Montana we stopped at the Little Big Horn National Park where General George Armstrong Custer’s Company met an overwhelming force of Lakota and Chayene.  Mesmirized with a park ranger’s 40 minute talk, we learned about the Battle of Little Bighorn and Sitting Bull, who lived in present day South Dakota.  An accomplished hunter and warrior, Sitting Bull was a political and spiritual leader of traditional Lakota culture.  He resisted the encroaching westward expansion as he tried to preserve their traditional way of life as nomadic buffalo hunters.  

President Grant’s administration had instructed 25 year old General Custer, who had military success in the Civil War, to remove the Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne to the Sioux Reservation in Dakota Territory.  In 1876 war broke out between Federal military forces and combined Lakota and Cheyenne tribes.  Riding white horses and wearing wool uniforms in the 92 degree heat, Custer and his 7th Cavalry of 262 men lacked water and were vastly outnumbered.  They met total defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, June 25, 1876.  Although they won the battle, the Indians lost the war against military efforts to end their independent nomadic way of life.

Red granite markers identify fallen Indian warriors at the battle.  In contrast, 265 white marble miliary headstones identify Custer and his men’s graves.  Monuments to both the cavalery and the Indians have been erected on the grounds. The words of Black Elk  “Know the power that is peace” echo at this disquieting scene for those who pause to consider our government’s treatment of native people.

In 1868 the US government believed it “cheaper to feed than to fight the Indians.” Government representatives signed a treaty at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, with the Lakota, Cheyenne and other tribes of the Great Plains making a large area in eastern Wyoming into a permanent Indian reservation.  A promise was made to “protect the Indians against all depredations by people of the United States.”

Peace did not last.  In 1874 gold was discovered in the Black Hills, the heart of the new Indian reservation.  News spread quickly.  Gold seekers swarmed into the region in violation of the treaty.  Though the army tried to keep the gold seekers out, they kept coming. The Indians left the reservation and resumed raids on settlements and travelers.  

Coming home is the best part of a trip for me. Traveling is always an adventure, providing new knowledge of history and interesting people to meet.  But like Goldilocks, I’ve found that my big bed at home, sleeping next to Dave & Buddy our Beagle, is just right.  Nothing beats home sweet home.  951

   

FROM WHERE I SIT Main Street Stories

In the small town where I grew up, Main Street offered all the shops one needed in the small town where I grew up. That was the place where everybody congregated on Saturday night.  There was the kids’ favorite, Potters Dime Store; mothers’ grocery shopping was done at Bob’s or Harry’s, and drug needs were filled at Setters or the Corner Drug just off Main Street.  After working in the fields all week, farmers either sat in their cars or on car fenders, smoking and visiting with other men.  Men were waiting for the “little woman” to complete her grocery shopping for the week,  and he might have an “itch” for a bit of recreation.  He could order a beer and shoot a game of pool in the low lit back room at Dick’s Recreation.   

A kids’ allowance and babysitting money was usually enough for a ticket to the movies at the Glenwood Theatre.  Usually there was a kid-friendly Saturday western starring John Wayne, Alan Ladd or Roy Rogers.  Maybe there’d be enough change to buy a box of popcorn and some Mild Duds.  A kid would sit in the balcony of the theatre and watch teenagers making out or view the thriller with a pal downstairs enjoying a double wide aisle seat.  

With a wide smile, Lee Sorset would be standing on the street corner outside Potters.  He knew everyone in town and wanted to hear their latest news.  Sometimes, on the corner of the Minton Hotel several enthusiastic purveyors of the gospel, with Bible in hand, would stop passersby to inquire, “Are You Saved?”  They were a curiousity for me as a kid, but rather frightening.  Was I saved; it was a deep thought for a kid?  Though I attended Sunday School and confirmation classes regularly, I had a few doubts...

On the northeast corner of Main Street Harry’s grocery had the best selection of candy cigarettes, big red waxed lips, tootsie rolls and coconut Neapolitan candies…even better than Potter’s Dime Story at the other end of the city block.  The candies were in cardboard candy boxes from Henry’s Candy Company and stacked just behind Harry’s checkout counter.  I loved the 3 for a nickel deals on Tootsie Roll Pops, especially the grape, orange and cherry flavors.  Sweet tarts, dots of pink, yellow and green on the long white waxed strip of paper, lasted for minutes on my tongue.  Black licorice pipes were fun to smoke, but the big red waxed lips lent a bit of glamour to my life.  Bit of Honey, wrapped in the red and yellow paper, was chewy; the pink, white and chocolate coconut squares tasted so sweet, they sometimes made my teeth ache.  I wasn’t big on visits to the dentist.  Buzzing drills hurt my ears as well as my mouth when they drilled holes in my cavities for those ugly silver fillings that Doc Gilman was big on.

Most of us will remember buying white tennies for gym class and fabric for a sewing project in home economics at Potters’ Dime Store. Wimpy’s cafe was next to the barber shop; across the street were the sweet rolls featured at the Chimes Cafe and the darkened atmosphers at Rodgers Cafe .  There was a grocery store on the southwest corner where Mrs. Sandeen clerked.  Was that grocery store the Red Owl?  Next door to that grocery was a small beer joint where little kids sat on the curb outside waiting for their parents at the bar.  So many stories, but I don’t know if Mrs. Avery, the social columnist ofThe Pope County Tribune back in the fifties and sixties, would have published several of my Main Street memories.  Dona Longaker wrote that my columns remind her of Mrs. Avery’s “Local Briefs”.

Carol Dick told us that when she was a seventh grader, her father bought a business downtown, a beer parlor with swivling stools plus the back room pool hall.  Being a teenager, she remembered how embarassing it was for her that Dad owned Dick’s Recreation.  Dona Longaker’s remembered that her dad often walked from the movie theater, which he owned, up the alley to the back door of the pool hall to play pool and smoke his Old Gold or Chesterfields cigarettes.  Hioajjjvio.l/ng no sons, he asked Dona if she wanted to come with him to the pool/ .lohoall and he would teach her to play pool.  But Dona knew that some of helr classmates might be there, maybe Ray Handorff, Dick Ziminske and others.   She felt she might embarrass herself by ripping the green felt cloth of the pool table with the pool cue.  She turned him down.

Wendy Schaub and I were too young to feel embarassed about riding our bikes in the back alley to the pool hall and going in the back door of the darkened pool hall to say hi to the guys I knew from their days at the jail.  Patiently, they taught  two  pigtailed girls to play a game of pool.  

Everyone was drawn to Main Street on Saturday night!  It was the “Happenning Place” in town.  From the cash drawing to the turkey giveaway at holidays, no one wanted to miss the week’s excitement of a Saturday night in small town America.

FROM WHERE I SIT     Nosy or Friendly Neighbors?   May 12, 2014

Pat DeKok Spilseth

Walking through my neighborhood, I see that Joan and Barb have been in their gardens, and Gayle has hung a spring wreath on her front door.  I hear noisy construction trucks roaring down the street with lumber for three new houses; the school bus is picking up kids for school; Kay and Dave are out walking and a few hoping to lose weight are running hoping to lose weight.  I know almost everyone in my neighborhood.  Buddy, my Beagle, is a magnet for me to meet new neighbors.  

In the small towns my husband and I grew up in, everybody knew everyone in town.  Sometimes, they knew too much.  Some folks would have preferred their business to remain private.  Neighbors were our friends: together we celebrated baptisms and confirmations with the expected treat, an “open Bible cake”.  At weddings, aunts or neighbor ladies poured coffee from the church’s elegant silver coffeepot and served plates of sandwiches of “dollar buns” with a slice of ham, pickles, assorted cake slices and mixed nuts and butter mints in pink, yellow and white.  

Our local weekly newspaper had a society columnist who called townspeople for social news.  She’d print the names of guests visiting local people in the Social column of the weekly paper, which everyone in town avidly read.  We read that paper front to back. What better way to keep up with who won the weekly raffle and meat giveaway, who got married, who died and what names were printed for city and county misdemeanors.  That’s the spot nobody wanted to see their name!  When Dave’s dad Maynard was cited for fishing without a license, he took a trip to Mpls to see his married daughter the day the paper came out.  He didn’t want to face the teasing of his pals.

Sometimes the newspaper editor got “heat” from upset readers.  When Shannon, an Irishman who came to town dressed in a kilt, published “The Green Sheet”, he reported tiffs going on in the city.  He wasn’t afraid of printing all the juicy gossip, no matter if someone important was involved.  He feuded with the editor of the local paper, which had been in existance for many years.  When that established editor/publisher was Ed Barsness, “The Green Sheet” labelled him BarnsMess.  How insulting!  Shannon didn’t garner friends, but he did report the news, at least what he considered news the public should hear.  The public was tantalized, waiting impatiently to read the latest scandal. Shannon didn’t last long in our small town, but while he was local, he caused quite a stir.

When a member of the community passed away, neighbors brought in tuna and hamburger casseroles, jello salads, chocolate, marble or spice cakes, bars and cookies.  Eveyone was a baker who used real butter, sugar and white flour.  Family and friends gathered on these occasions for comfort and support of their loved ones.  Tasty, homemade food was meant to be a comfort for those who had lost a family member or friend.  

When a barn or home burned, a child drowned or was hurt in a car accident, a family member was deathly ill or a spouse died, friends, with accompaning food, gathered to help.  No one in need was left to fend for themselves.  Neighbors gave neighbors rides to the doctor, picked up groceries, cleaned houses, and cared for the children of the afflicted.

Growing up on a farm, Dave’s dad would take the family on a Sunday drive to check out neighbors’ fields.  Who had already been planting or harvesting?  Who had new farm equipment?  Who had a brand new car?  Tongues really wagged if they’d bought a Cadillac!  My folks took a Sunday family drive to visit relatives and friends who lived in Starbuck or Brooten or out in the country near Glenwood.  Serving lunch to visiters was always expected.  We ate sandwiches with pickles; kids drank Kool-Aid, and parents drank coffee with Norwegians, tea among the Dutch relatives.  Pastries had been baked, not bought at the store.  Moms were stay-at-home moms who cooked meat and potato dinners, baked cakes and cookies, sewed our skirts and aprons, washed, ironed and cleaned the house. 

A few busybodies knew everything about their neighbors.  Country folks had certain “rings” for their phone calls.  Some “rubberneckers” listened in on other’s phone calls when they heard a certain ring, not their own.  Soon everyone knew who was dating the neighbor girl or boy, if some kid got in trouble at school or with the law, and if someone was drinking too much.   I wonder if at the fast-growing Friendship Villages in Florida neighbors are as informed as we were in small towns and the country?  

Today I live in a metropolitan city where life is different from life in the small towns where we grew up.  We don’t know everyone; many work quite a distance away from the neighborhood and are rarely home.  We found a home on a lake with friendly neighbors who worship with us at a small church closeby and shop at the local grocery, hardware and drug stores.  The public library, restaurants and banks are five minutes away.  All our needs are supplied nearby.  Like many neighborhoods, mine has a few odd ducks and some people who don’t speak to anyone; they’re very private, rather unfriendly.  In a way, that’s fortunate for those living next door.  There are no obligations.   Some neighbors are only summer residents, using their lake house as a getaway from the city’s heat.  We like living in this neighborhood near friends we enjoy and whose support we can count on, but we still have privacy.  962 words

FROM WHERE I SIT    SENSING CHANGES APRIL18, 2014    Pat DeKok Spilseth

April showers bring May flowers and glorious sunshine, breaking up ice, opening the lake for boats to speed across the water.  Neighbors are putting docks into the lake.  Yesterday, shirtless guys in yellow, red, and green kayaks paddled across our shoreline dodging ducks in their path.  

Rhubarb tips and tulips are peeking through the dusty grass and dried leaves.  Creeping Charlie has begun its yearly takeover in the lawn and gardens.  Time to get out the rakes, fertilizer and week killer.  

My most treasured reminders of spring are the blue wild hyacinth and sprouting spring beauties in the wooded park across from our house, the mottled leaves of trout lilies and dutchman’s breeches as well as the teensy purple, white and pink violets.  

The maples in our yard are budding and the willow’s branches are sprouting yellow tendrils, which will soon be waving in the breeze.  Fat raccoons are prowling the woods: a few are probably sleeping in holes in our aged maple trees and under the deck.  Buddy is in a barking frenzy with spring’s eruption of hopping bunnies and teasing squirrels.  He’d love a playmate to chase around the yard, but the bunnies and squirrels are not interested.  The ticks are out, and soon pesky mosquitoes will buzz and strike at our white winter skin.  

Our wooden Adirondack chairs are scaling, drastically in need of sanding and repainting.  The wood deck and house need a power wash and oiling.  Weekend rains cleaned our folding lawn chairs so we could sit outside on the deck at Easter, enjoying the company of relatives and friends.  Soon the loons will join the ducks and geese on the lake, and we will, once again, hear their haunting cries.  

Spring brings so many changes.  Soon I’ll not have the time to enjoy reading books as often as I had this winter.  Our long MInnesota winter days let me enjoy entering other worlds in books, which I love to explore.  “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested,” wrote Francis Bacon.  That’s exactly how I felt last week as I read and thought about many ideas in Julian Barnes’ THE SENSE OF AN ENDING. a page-turning meditation on aging, memory and regret.  I was enraptured with Barnes’ insights about youthful insecurities, aged regrets and false recollections.  “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you,” wrote M.J. Adler.   I identified with Barnes’ teenage characters suffering the insecurities of dating, body changes, and shifting friendships as well as his aging character stewing about a boring past and humdrum present life.   As I read, I agreed with John Kieran’s words, “I am a part of all I have read.” 

Sometimes I wonder about the authenticity of my memories.  Barnes wrote, “History is that certainity produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.”    As we age, there are fewer people to document the certainity of our memories.  Perhaps things were not as good nor as bad as we remember.  Was my life at the jail with Blackie, Verdie and Paul, the Dancing Decorator, as terrific as I remember?  Maybe it’s all about how we interpret those events, which may change as we age.  

As we change, easing into middle age, Barnes wrote that “Middle aged man contends with a past he never thought much about.”  Mindlessly, most of us plod through our daily lives not identifying causes and effects.   Barnes writes “Every day is Sunday”.   Boredom goes on from generation to generation.  We tend to live years of stagnancy, waiting for our lives to begin.  How many of us are still waiting for moments of inspiration, hoping to find a new passion, wanting more excitement in our lives?  

More changes come as we enter dreaded old age.  Our fears compound.  We might not be as independent; we may need the services provided by a nursing home.  We don’t like being old where there is often too much overfamiliarity.  We still want to be viewed as a dignified person, a person of value...who wants to be invisible?

When we’re young we invent different futures for ourselves; but when we’re old, we invent different pasts.   As a teen, many feel we can be anyone we want to be.  We might have dreamed of being a movie star, some wildly successful, important person.  But life became real: job hunting, marriage, kids and paying bills became our day to day existence.  Maybe that’s the time when the worlds in books entered our lives, giving us a means of escaping from our “Sunday” lives to a life filled with excitement.  

Barnes has me thinking: time first grounds us, then confounds us.   Am I being realistic to settle for safety, avoiding change, not facing certain things I want to avoid?

Most of us are average.  We have to reconcile that life may not be all it’s cracked up to be.  Our youthful idealism, those pie-in-the-sky dreams of who we could be, are rarely achieved.   We may never be the person we wished to be, but we’re always changing, and the way we live does affect others.  We make impressions on those around us.  If not now, when will you and I begin to fully live?

Springtime brings changes: new life in nature; renewed energy and ideas in us.   Like Minnesota’s changing seasons, books bring interesting people, other worlds, new ideas, wonder and joy into my life.  “Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.”  Kathleen Norris

“A HOUSE WITHOUT BOOKS IS A ROOM WITHOUT A SOUL.”  MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO”   981 words

Easter on Parade

FROM WHERE I SIT  EASTER ON PARADE MARCH 29, 2014 PAT SPILSETH

The Easter Bunny will soon be hopping his way to our house with baskets of candy eggs decorated for the holiday.  It’s taken many years, but it’s finally dawned on me that it’s crazy to believe a hopping bunny on two legs will carry a basket of chocolate eggs  to my house on Easter.  It’s almost as bizarre as a flying white stork bringing babies to houses with pregnant women!  What salesperson imagined this strange idea to market Easter candy?  Why didn’t we question these ideas when we first heard them?  On Easter, christians celebrate the risen Christ, who died for our sins and rose again.   Many of us also enjoy other Easter festivities...egg hunts, spring flowers, candy, fuzzy bunnies, straw bonnets and an Easter parade.

As a kid, I thought that decorating Easter eggs would be fun.  I bet Moms think differently after they’re stuck with cleaning up the mess of cracked eggs, colored dyes, and messes on the table and floor.   One year I persuaded Mom to dye hard boiled eggs into pink, aqua, blue and violet colors for Easter.  That happened only once at my house.   We tried dipping the eggs in bowls of various dyes at the kitchen table, but our results were not pretty.  Since nobody in our family liked to eat hard boiled eggs, after a few days sitting on the kitchen table in the sun, the eggs begin to smell rotten.  They ended up in the garbage.  Not even the dog would eat those eggs.

When my own kids were little, we tried having Easter egg hunts a few years. Usually either Andy or Kate would end up crying because they didn’t get the most eggs in their basket.  These kids are so competitive!  We gave the hunt a final try when Kate must have been about eight and Andy five.  We invited our St Louis, MO. friends, the McAdams, with their little kids Patrick and Sarah to join us for the holiday.  To get into the spirit, Dave put on a gray and white Easter Bunny costume, with cottontail and long ears.  We parents rose early on the frosty Easter morning to hide the eggs among the trees and bushes in our lawn before the kids awakened.   After getting the kids into their Easter outfits so they’d be ready for church, we distributed pink, purple and yellow  straw baskets to all four kids and said GO!  Find the hidden eggs.  Dave got the movie camera ready to roll...

It was a race to disaster.

Dressed in pretty Easter dresses, their winter boots and jackets, Kate and Sarah raced to the tall maple trees and bushes in our yard, where the girls had spied a pink and yellow egg.  Andy saw it at the same time!  Dashing to the treasure, they collided and began hitting each other with their straw baskets, fighting to claim the egg for their baskets.  Eggs flew out of the baskets and scattered on the lawn still wet with dew.  Kate wildly scratched Andy’s face and his chubby cheeks turned beet red with tears of frustration; sweet Sarah stared open-mouthed..she’d never seen such chaos; Patrick, the youngest kid, checked out another tree for a different egg.   Kate dove on Andy’s back, wallopped him, and snatched the prized egg!   As their bellowing cries echoes through the neighborhood, their heads smacked and both started bawling.

Meanwhile, up on the deck Dave in his warm Bunny outfit was filming the egg hunt as kids scattered on the yard.  Everybody, but the kids, was laughing.  I had to separate the fight before someone ended up with a concussion.  Already several faces were streaked with tears and bloody noses.  Their Easter outfits were ruined, torn with grass stains and blood.  That was the end of Easter hunts at our house. 

When you think about it, isn’t it strange bunnies have anything to do with chocolate eggs?  In the 18th century, the Easter Bunny idea came to the U.S. when German Lutheran immigrants in the Pennsylvania Dutch area told their children about the “Osterhase”, meaning hare, not rabbit.  Legend tells us that only good children received gifts of colored eggs in nests that they made in their caps and bonnets before Easter. Sometimes the bunny is depicted with clothes, carrying colored eggs in a basket with toys to the homes of children, much like Santa Claus.  

Personally, I haven’t given up on Easter egg hunts.  It’s so much fun to hide the eggs and watch little kids race to fill their baskets with eggs.  If I ever have grandchildren, I’ll want to host an Easter egg hunt, happily dye Easter eggs with the tiny tots, even clean up the mess.  I’m hope Easter will be warm this year so we can celebrate with lilies, tulips and hyacinths not only in our churches but also outdoors.  We Minnesotans desperately need warm spring weather.  Wouldn’t it be great to enjoy Easter without wool coats and ear muffs?     846words

COFFEE CREATIVITY

FROM WHERE I SIT  COFFEE CREATIVITY  March 25, 2014 Pat DeKok Spilseth

As Dr. Seuss wrote in his book that I used to read to my children,

 “How did it get so late so soon? 

It’s night before it’s afternoon.  

December is here before it’s June.  

My goodness how the time has flown.  

How did it get so late so soon?”  

Where did the time go?  Some days I feel that I’m mindlessly drifting on an endless treadmill, going nowhere.  I find myself shuffling worn cards, playing solitare to pass the time.  Though the sun is shining today, I have little energy to try something new or tackle a task that needs to be done.  My energy seems to be dissipating with each new year, especially during the winter months when the sun doesn’t shine so brightly.   Darkened hours take over my days, sending me to bed with a good book in the early evening.

It’s winter.  That’s the problem.  I’ve got to shake myself out of this lethargy.  Maybe another cup of strong, black coffee will help.   Coffee helps energize me, but I often wonder how could a cup of tasty coffee be good for me?  Doctors are now saying that dark chocolate and red wine are good for our health.  Who knows what they’ll discover about coffee!   I just read an article by Sanjiv Chopra, MD, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, who wrote that ”Coffee is truly a lifesaving miracle drug.”

According to Dr. Chopra, it’s still a scientific mystery how a simple cup of  coffee works wonders in the body.  In The Readers’ Digest, epidemiological studies repeatedly verify coffee’s astonishing benefits: 

*More than three cups a day lowers women’s risk of developing the most common skin cancer by 20%.

*More than six cups a day cuts men’s risk of dying from prostate cancer by 60 percent.

*Drinking at least one cup of coffee a day lowers women’s risk of stroke by up to 25%.

*Consuming at least two cups daily reduces women’s chances of becoming depressed by up to 20%.

I feel new energy from a strong cup of java!   Coffee recharges my energy and creativity: I’m back writing columns at the computer, baking cookies, and I just popped a casserole in the oven.  WOW!   

Read Mark Walton’s Boundless Potential: Transform Your Brain Unleash Your Talents, Reinvent Your Work in Midlife and Beyond.  National Institute on Aging’s director Sunil Iyengar said.   “Enhanced creativity is associated with greater satisfaction,” Though dementia or brain damage can affect creative output, in a healthy brain, decline is not a given.”  

There’s no reason to assume that people lose their energy and stop being creative just because  we get gray hair.  Check out those energetic, aging rockers Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, both 69.  They’re still strutting across stages around the world and draw huge crowds for their concerts.  

Doris Lessing, the Nobel Prize-winning writer on racism, colonialism, feminism and communism wrote about her own creativity: “Don’t imagine you’ll have it forever.  Use it while you’ve got it because it’ll go; it’s sliding away like water down a plug hole.”

To stay creative and original in later years, we have to be willing to try new things.    Self-help columns tell us to take up a new hobby, learn another language, travel...  Salvador Dali switched from painting in the classical art style he was trained in to surreal painting and sculptured objects.  Remember seeing those crazy clocks of his with sagging faces?  Matisse, my favorite artist, went from painting lovely, serene family and landscape scenes to assembling colorful cutout shapes on paper.  When Norman Mailer lost his teeth and was walking with two canes, he was still writing.   Grandma Moses didn’t start painting until she was in her seventies, but when she died at 101, she had created 1600 works of art.

Rex Jung, assistant professor  of neurosurgery at the University of New Mexico, thinks that older people have lots of data  and fewer brakes inhibiting their thoughts. They’re able to put things together in more novel and useful ways.  He said, “When you see an increase in people’s creative undertakings in retirement, it may not be just because they’re retired and have more time on their hands; it may be because the brain organization is different.”  

Age can bring diminished energy, but also there’s a greater urgency to the creative process.   We don’t want to run out of time before completing a project that consumes our interest.  Writer Valerie Trueblood wrote, “...you just see the brevity of life more acutely when you’re older, and I think it makes you work harder and be interested in making something exact and completing it.”

It could be that society’s stereotypes about aging may be the biggest creativity killers.

When we begin to sense the lengthening shadows of age, we need to shake off that midlife shiver and try something new and different.  Give your brain a jolt.  We may be getting gray, but coffee can help spur our brains to keep working.  Have another cup of java.  847 words

SPRING YEARNINGS march 22, 2014

Tulips, daffodils and crocus...where are you?  I want to smell sweet breezes drifting over the lake and across a freshly mown lawn; I NEED sunshine and warmth.  I’ve had it with  winter’s cold temps and icy, potholed streets!  I’ve been dreaming of Florida’s sandy beaches, and how I long to eat fresh fish on an outdoor patio.

As I write my weekly column, I’m listening to a classical music station.  It just interrupted my thoughts with more alarming news: twenty degree temps are forecasted for tomorrow!  ENOUGH!  It’s almost time for Easter dresses and straw bonnets.  LIttle girls will freeze in their finery if this obnoxious weather continues...

What’s a girl to do?  

Walking Buddy, my Beagle, around the neighborhood yesterday, a neighbor stopped to chat.  Max noted, “Have you noticed our recent alpine landscape?  Have we been time-traveled on a magic carpet to Austria’s snowcapped mountains?” 

The snowbanks must look like mountains to Buddy too.  Bravely, he climbs the treacherous inclines, often sinking into the melting pile, then struggles to regain his ascent to see what’s over the top, on the other side of the mountain.  He’s oblivious to the fact that he could sink deeper and have to push and shove snowbanks to get through the piled snow.   He doesn’t seem to mind slippery, icy spots nor the swarming mud on the street from all the trucks hauling lumber into our neighborhood.  Obstacles are a challenge to my dog.  He mounts the biggest, dirtiest, plowed chunks on the roadside to see what’s on the other side.  

Gardening catalogues are arriving in the mail, plastered with blooming iris, clematis, peonies and ferns.  I’m not a gardener; instead, I’m thinking about plowing down any remaining plants and returning the ground to grass.  Summer’s heat and humidity ruins any gardening wishes I harbor in the spring.  And weeding...who enjoys that?  Some invasive plant has taken over one garden; the other garden doesn’t get enough sunshine.  

April arrives this week.  I can almost sniff SPRING in the air...some days.  It’s an intoxicating time for Buddy.  He gets literally drunk on spring scents, tossed Dairy Queen cones and fast food wrappings abandoned by the crews building new homes on the Point.  Anything with a scent of food gets his immediate attention.

It’s time to clean the garage.  I’m eager to unveil my tiny MIata, with the red racing stripe, which has been sleeping all winter in the garage.  It might need to have a jolt from Dave’s battery charger.  I’ll have to wade through the stacked wood chunks, croquet balls and mallets, swim rafts and old tennis racquests that line the walls and rafters of our garage to get to the Miata.  Our garage is a menagerie of coffee cans with nails and screws, rusty staples and assorted boxes of scrapbooks and old toys the kids have outgrown.  They need to come and get their teenage letter jackets, graduation and sports uniforms still stored in their closets.  Andy’s snowboard, his baseball cards and electronic games might be worth something on Craigs’ list.  Kate will want her treasured books and numerous framed photographs of friends lining the bookcases in her room.

In the rafters are wooden cross country skiis, the old ones that needed waxing, as well as Andy’s baby crib, the red wagon Grandma Esther gave the kids, discarded rugs, probably stained with various dog markings.  Bikes are hanging on the walls of the garage along with assorted pieces of lumber, which Dave says he’s certain to use some year in the distant future.  

It’s spring break time at the schools.  No kids are playing in the park or riding bikes around the neighborhood.  Everyone has abandoned the neighborhood to fly to warmer temperatures in the South.  I’m still waiting for sidewalk puddles, a sure sign of spring.  Soon I have to find my tall water boots to walk Buddy on his daily constitutional.  Pot holes dug by thundering snowplows and construction trucks have plowed dirty banks and smashed ice chunks, destroying the surface of our roads around Casco Point.  Spring brings new construction and potholes every year.

By this time, I expect to hear the sound of trickling water.  I can’t wait for spring to wash away our gray skies and frozen lakes.  Like broken eggshells, ice chunks will soon push up and over each other onto the shore.  Slowly, the ice will crack and settle among dirty deposits of stringy sod, random stones, grass clippings, tree branches, dead bugs and frozen rodent carcass.  AHhhh, spring’s a rejuvenating, but messy time of year...I can’t wait!  Warmer weather would do a lot for my physical as well as mental health.  Perhaps the flower show downtown at Macy’s will inspire me and lift my spirits.   798 words