Animals

My Friend Mickey

This week's Time magazine features its annual 100 Most Influential People.  Very interesting.  It also features this year's 100 most influential animals.

Some people think I don't like animals.  I do but I have a different idea than some on how they should be treated.  My brother, who adored his dogs, used to call me Dr. Kevorkian.

Anyway, a prestigious board picked the 100 most influential animals for the preceding year.  I'm sharing my favorite five with you:

Revenant Bear

The Revenant Bear - He gave Leonardo DiCaprio his long overdue Academy Award.

Cecil

Cecil the Lion - Remember the American hunter/dentist who shot Cecil with his bow and arrow, not realizing that he'd shot a celebrity lion, and then had to go into hiding in fear of his life?

Zika Mosquitoes - Here in Florida we've always been afraid of mosquitoes.  Now Zika is terrorizing us.

Pizza Rat

The Pizza Rat - You would think a rat dragging a slice of pizza down the subway steps would be a ho-hum experience for New Yorkers but, instead, it caused a national sensation.

Mickey Mouse - This guy is the once and always most influential animal in the world.  He's responsible for most of the 75 million visitors we had here in Central Florida last year.  We love him. As Time magazine said:  "He's the Warren Buffet of animals."


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Coke and Cigarettes

A friend sent me these old ads.   When I was a kid I spent my summers on a farm in southern Indiana with my aunt and various other relatives who arrived on the weekends for huge dinners - mostly in the yard.  The farm was on a mountain called Floyd's Knobs.  The yard overlooked a magnificent view.

In all the years I spent time with these relatives - and at home in Indianapolis with my dad - there was absolutely no alcohol consumption.  But there were always plenty of cokes and cigarettes.  The cokes were in those little 5 ounce bottles and were kept on ice or sometimes - when we went swimming or fishing in the creek -  they were put in the cold running stream.  In Indianapolis I loved going to the corner drugstore for a chocolate fountain coke.

I

I loved Coke but I never tried the cigarettes.  I discovered later that I was allergic so just being close to the smoke made me sick.  However, that didn't stop all of the grownups in my life from smoking all the time.  

But let's give them a break.  It was still in the time when coke and cigarettes were seen by some as wonder drugs. Moms fed cokes to babies who had colic.  It wasn't unusual to see nipples on coke bottles.  Chain smoking was considered healthy.

Now I occasionally have a diet/caffeine free coke.  But I am extremely grateful to live in a smoke free environment.

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Binge Watching

Dave and I just made some changes with our cable company.  With the threat of our rates being raised I called Brighthouse to tell them we watch only about 3 or 4 channels out of the hundreds we have access to so we have no interest in even more channels or raising our rates in any way.

He didn't seem to believe me.

So I told him we like to binge watch Netflix series.  That scared him.  But I was telling the truth.  For example, we have binge watched Longmire and Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries.  But the latest news is that we have just finished binge watching the entire seven seasons of Nurse Jackie.  We loved it.  But be forewarned, it's gritty.

By binge watching, we mean a couple of hours a couple of nights a week. We're thinking now about Bluebloods.  We've never seen it on the regular TV.  We saw the pilot last night on Netflix.


And here's another Netflix suggestion:  Find the small British film Undertaking Betty.  Especially if you love Christopher Walken like we do.  You'll love the film and him in it.

The upshot of the phone call with Brighthouse was they lowered our bill and gave us some new movie channels for free.


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Will I Die Sooner Because I Live in Florida and I'm not Urber Rich?

Recent reports in JAMA state that people with higher income live longer.  (Yes, that makes sense) But with this interesting nuance.  There is no leveling off point.  Because I have more income than, say, a homeless person, I can understand my chances of living longer are higher.  But JAMA is saying that the people who have the most money (that pesky top 1%) live longer than the rest of us.

But where you live makes a difference.  If you live in Salt Lake City and are rich you live the longest.  But the highest income people in Las Vegas live four years less than Salt Lake City.

Poor people who live in San Francisco or New York live longer than poor people in Detroit. (Maybe for poor folks living in Detroit it just seems longer.)

Experts believe these disparities are due to public health efforts in various cities.

So we regular folks have to use our own efforts to stay healthy.   But, sadly, some of living a long, healthy life has to do with having boat loads of money and excellent health insurance.


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Happiness vs. Stuff

I'm continuing to enjoy the book "Sabbath" and the weekly class Dave and I are taking to discuss the book.  We are already pretty much minimalists, trying not to have anything we don't need in order to live a simple "non-consuming" life.  And to have more time to just BE and not feel guilty about it.

I love the cartoon panel above by Grant Snyder.  To me it says that good things will happen even if I, personally, am not making them happen.

Since the end of World War II our economy has been built on consumption.  It was planned for us.  Wayne Muller, in "Sabbath," talks about happiness vs. desire.  Not the desire we feel for our lover, but the desire we have for stuff.  We can't get enough stuff so we must work harder and harder to get more.  Read the following advertisement for perfume.

You want it.  You want it bad.  Sometimes so much it hurts.  You can taste it.  You feel like you would do anything to get it.  Go further than they'd suspect.  Twist your soul and crush what's in your way.  Then you get it.  And something happens.  You become the object of your desire.  And it feels incredible.

Again, this is an ad for perfume.  Expensive perfume.  Meanwhile, enjoying nature costs nothing.

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Jim's Long Goodbye

From time to time I've shared Facebook posts from my old friend, Jim McWhinnie, who is a United Methodist minister and for many years, the smartest guy in the room.  What has impressed me most in his later years are his writing skills.

But the word I would use for Jim now is "brave."  He has been a constant inspiration to me as I write this blog.  He's always been remarkably open and honest about himself.  I want to do the same.

Several of you readers have asked me to share more of his writings.  But Jim is not the funny, witty guy he was when he first started on his Alzheimer's journey.  He is struggling.  He's mostly writing prayers that bless me and scores of others.

I've known several people with dementia, including my husband Ken.  Most folks refuse to deal realistically with what's happening.  In fact, I've never known of a person who has been as open and honest about  himself and this illness as Jim McWhinnie.

Following is a small sampling of a prayer Jim wrote yesterday.


Lord, I feel of late as if I my life is being disassembled a little bit each day. Oh, my soul is strong, my peace is strong, my faith is strong, as is my love. But so many other parts of me ... well, they have begun to fall away.

I loved to play games of chess ... but my mind now gets so confused and my concentration now quickly fades.

I have for years worked hard and risen from my poverty and ignorance, but now the work exhausts me so and my inner drive sputters almost to a stop, now and then.

I still have the will to live ... but it is not as powerful as it once was ... now that Day to Come is more inviting,  more and more ...

I still have the moments I have gathered through the years, but their memories are becoming falling leaves in the latter days of autumn.

Lord, am I depressed? To a degree I would suppose. But more precisely ... I am fading.

Jim McWhinnie

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Keeping the Sabbath

Years ago I created a seminar titled "The Fine Art of Saying 'No.'"  It was popular.  Folks wanting to succeed, thought they had to volunteer for everything, to be "on" 24-7.  Taking this seminar was the beginning of giving themselves permission to rethink their lives.

I didn't invent this concept.  It's an intrinsic part of our Judeo-Christian history.  It's called Sabbath.

But we humans can't seem to let anything just be fun.  We have to organize it and quantify it until it, Sabbath, also becomes "work."

The Jews in the Old Testament did it.   Protestants and Catholics did it later.   Remember when you were a kid and you couldn't do anything fun on Sunday?

That's not what Sabbath is about.  It's all about fun and rest and delight and joy and thankfulness.

Years ago I went to a five day retreat on Sabbath.  One of the more interesting things I remember our leaders telling us was that the Sabbath was for making love.  What?

My friend, Art, is currently leading a four week class on "Sabbath" using the book by Wayne Muller, who is a big time Sabbath fan.  Here are a couple of his definitions of Sabbath.

Sabbath time can be a revolutionary challenge to the violence of overwork, mindless accumulation and the endless multiplication of desires, responsibilities, and accomplishments.

Remembering the Sabbath means Remember to delight in your life, in the fruits of your labor.  Remember to stop and offer thanks for the wonder of it.

Sabbath honors the necessary wisdom of dormancy. 

(Sabbath is) the space and time created to say yes to sacred spirituality, sensuality, sexuality, prayer, rest, song, delight.

But, then, in our need to make everything about rules and regs - Muller says the Talmud tractate on marriage says that married couples should make love every Friday night -    and it is traditional for some sects to make love four times during the Sabbath.

That sounds like work to me.

Remember the Sabbath!


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50th Wedding Anniversary

This is my Grandma and Grandpa Strange on their 50th wedding anniversary.  They were old.  Their activities were pretty much confined to sitting on the porch.  My grandpa died shortly after this.  My grandma lived several more years, but she was ready to go.  Years before her death I remember asking her why she didn't get her glasses fixed and she said she wasn't planning to use them much longer.

My Grandma Strange gave birth (to my knowledge) 12 times,  including a set of twins, for a grand total of 13 children.  They were a hard working farm family.

So, statistically, for that time in history, they were exceptional in having a 50th wedding anniversary.

But it's also exceptional today.  Despite the fact that we're living much longer, only 5% of us make it to the 50 year mark.  This is due to many factors, including divorce and marrying later in life.

However, I have several friends who've celebrated their 50th wedding anniversaries.  None of them look or act like my grandparents.  They are traveling between homes, vacationing in Europe, going on mission trips to third world countries, volunteering in schools, going to the theater and taking classes.  They work out and wear make up.  They spend time on the Internet every day.

This past week we attended two 50th wedding anniversary parties.  They were very different but both off the chart fun, exciting and beautiful.  Both of them were hosted by the couples' children.

Of the combined six children, only three of them have a shot at getting to their 50th wedding anniversaries.  So, it's still a rare and beautiful thing.

As you know, neither Dave nor I made it to our 50th.  Both of our spouses died after 44 years of marriage.  But, also as you know, Dave has promised me ten (vertical) years - and I'm holding him to it.


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