About Edwardian Victorian

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The mariner owns an Edwardian Victorian home in Colorado. It was built in 1901 and in its time must have been the queen of Old Colorado City. His advice to everyone is never to own an Edwardian Victorian home built in 1901. Long ago, before most construction regulations were created, the grand house was converted to apartments.

The mariner has owned the home for six years. To this day, house wiring wanders uncharted through the huge home. Eight circuit breakers, four outside and four inside on the third floor control current flow. Like most older homes, the building was grandfathered in and is legal unless the function of the building (apartments) changes. The gas lines are equally obscured from logic or direction. He has never seen two water heaters joined together side by side with at least a dozen elbow joints.

The gas furnace in the basement distributes heat to the entire building via ducts two feet in diameter – delivered to original, ornate iron wall registers.

My son and I have rebuilt a significant portion of the plumbing and must deal with broken septic tile that runs not to the street but under another home built on top of the tiles that run to an alley on the other side. Constant rotor rooter service is critical unless one want a septic backup in the basement.

Together with my son and wife – and contractors, we have patched, plugged, refurbished, and otherwise sustained the life of the building. We have hung doors, rebuilt cabinets, rehung ancient windows with broken weight ropes, replaced broken glass, light fixtures and carpet. The whole building, inside and out has been newly painted.

But the mariner will tell you the worst job of all is replacing venetian blinds. Yes, it seems like a simple and effortless job. But you are fooled. It is a combination of circumstances. First, the windows are very high under a ten foot ceiling; the corners of the lintel look like the building was hit by gunfire regularly since the First World War. Where does one make the next holes to hang the blinds? Some corners are made mostly of wood putty, leaving no firmness that wood provides.

The next circumstance is the step ladder. It is never convenient and requires dangerous leaning over furniture with a large sheet of old window glass inches away. Try leveling the mounting hardware with one hand stretched to its utmost while marking the spots with the other hand somehow reaching over the arm holding the level. Then try to drill holes and mounting screws. By now your legs and arms are growing fatigued, the ladder sways under you and you drop the last two screws to the floor.

The final circumstance is the mariner: mid seventies, palsey that makes using a screwdriver a long, struggling experience to join driver and screw. What should have been a morning’s work lingered toward suppertime. His aching back spoke of the strain of imbalance and the shoulders whimpered with soreness.

Fortunately, tomorrow’s chores are hanging a laundry room door, and repairing cabinets in the bathroom. Simple stuff anyone can do. Building porch decks and properly fitted stairs and rails is easy; the square does all the work.

If you have to hang all new blinds, sell the house!

Our last chore is to pack for the return to Iowa. Our truck was full on the way here. We are returning with a bit more. An inversion table, a lawn mower and perhaps a grill have been added to a truckload that was full on the way out.

Anyone want to buy a Edwardian Victorian home built in 1901? The venetian blinds ar new.

Ancient Mariner

 

The Wealth Gap is a Growing Topic of Interest

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The mariner has reviewed a number of books published recently that openly attack the wealth gap in the United States. One book by Matt Taibbi, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, addresses not only the inequities of wealth but also the inequities of social justice in the legal system. In an interview with Jon Stewart, he gives the true example of the young man caught smoking marijuana who spent 41 days in Rikers Prison while the banks stole millions of dollars from “old ladies” selling fake mortgages and walked away without one fine or one prosecution.

Michael Lewis has a popular book called “Flash Boys” that uncovers a stock exchange game where every stock buy by an individual is interrupted, bought by another broker then sold to the original buyer at a higher price. The scheme was hard to uncover because it took advantage of computer speed and shorter distance to the exchange  computer. In other words, in the milliseconds immediately after a trade was launched in, for example, Des Moines, the intercepting computer beat the transaction to the exchange, bought the stock and sold it back to the slower network – all in milliseconds! This trade interruption happens tens of thousands times a day and yields millions of dollars to the intercepting brokers.

The most interesting source is a lecture by Professor Alexander Stoner (Salisbury University, Maryland) at the University of Kansas called, “Social Thought and Research.”  Stoner says “economic growth is the new secular religion, meaning it is a cultural norm that many are afraid to challenge.”

His position is that economic growth is flawed for three reasons: it measures the progress of our society in dollars, not quality of life; it has not eliminated high unemployment and poverty in the U.S. and it threatens the habitability of the earth and the lives of all its inhabitants.

The direction the United States must take is to lessen the pursuit of highest profit. Rather, the economic policy should be one that pursues what is best for the United States as a country peopled by citizens who stabilize the economy. Right now, the economy is weak and corporations and business in general, are not trying to stabilize the national economy. The only game in town is profit for profit’s sake. The national government is a co-conspirator.

The corporate lock on government prevents intelligent analysis of the economy from a national perspective. Many politically significant corporations are international and are not contained by a nation’s economic interests. Further, corporations create a shadow diplomacy with other nations regardless of that nation’s relationship with the United States.

In the last twenty years, trade agreements have undermined nation-to-nation agreements, turning the process into corporate license to avoid regulations, laws and taxes. Trade agreements are not based on national benefit.

Finally, because profit and profit alone is the motivation of business, large and small, the nation’s environment is deteriorating. Recently, deep minor earthquakes, which occur frequently, are linked to the failure of fracking, allowing wastewater and even natural gas to leech to areas that are damaging to citizens and even the deep rock layers.

Septic and chemical abuse, performed only for convenience and cost saving measures, destroys wildlife and fish dependent on good water. In many cases, some of the life is human beings. But landfills for new homes in sensitive areas, unregulated commercial dumping, and ignoring the laws related to easement around streams and rivers rapidly reduces the quality of the nation’s ecological health.

At the bottom, the pressure to increase profits leads the citizenry to purchase products manufactured in harmful ways. Products, food and their processes are not monitored closely to assure that manufacturing is ecologically neutral. Even farming is subject to the secular religion of larger and larger profit, costing many small farmers and many small towns to disappear. More and more farms are owned by corporations as part of a vertical organization that controls cost from hoof to plate. Environmental responsibility is not a goal.

In the recent past, citizens were sensitive to taxation, infrastructure and jobs. These concerns affected their vote. This attitude must change today. True, those issues are still important but they can no longer be resolved in and of themselves. What is causing greater impact is less easily defined but will in the medium run, damage the traditional concern of citizens.

Carbon emissions are very important right now, but the individual citizen, especially in a weak economy, will not vote for environmental security if there is even the remotest threat to a job. The same is true of politicians. Because of manipulations in election processes, the Congress is chock full of older politicians insensitive to the needs of national quality, environmental stability and national identity among nations. The United States is not a corporation, it is a Federalist Republic run by citizens. The US needs a new breed of politicians. Maybe it needs a new breed of voters.

Ancient Mariner

 

The Future According to Michio Kaku

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The mariner drove to Colorado to visit family and attend to an apartment complex he owns. The trip is lengthy at 12 hours. It can be accomplished in one day but now the mariner takes two days to cover the distance – two six-hour drives is plenty.

While driving he listened to Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Michio KakuHuman Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 by Michio Kaku. A photograph of Michio Kaku is included in case you have not placed name with face.

The first part of the book describes how fast technology advances. In the last one hundred years, educated scientists predicted technological achievement at a much slower pace than how technology actually advanced. The automobile and aircraft existed around one hundred years ago and both were considered novelties that generally were not useful. One insightful scientist suggested that air balloons will be the main form of personal transportation – as common as the automobile today. No one believed high-speed trains were possible within the next one hundred years.

By 2100, Kaku predicts a full integration of every aspect of our lives. The Internet will enable the following:

Each piece of clothing you wear will have a chip that tracks wear and tear and will order a replacement automatically with a design approved by you. You may choose to select another design by scrolling through a specialized catalog based on your past selections. There is no mention of credit cards. The same is true for every object in your life. In a conversation with someone about the book, they asked, “Does that include spouses?”

The desktop, laptop, and handheld devices will disappear within a decade and slowly be replaced by contact lenses with a microchip embedded that performs all the automated functions you perform today on current devices.

There is a rule called Moore’s Law that says computer speed doubles every 18 months. It has held true since the invention of the first computer. Kaku says there is a limit where changes in technology will end Moore’s law. At that point, all information everywhere in the world will be simultaneous and available to anyone. Interestingly, Kaku says that as we implement the new technology, it will reduce the effectiveness of capitalism, which depends on exclusive information and time advantage. But everyone will already know everything and everyone world-wide will be introducing new information at the same time, sort of like Facebook except the input will be useful.

The walls of rooms in your house will be covered with wallpaper that is also a computer screen. Change the color and pattern with your contact lens computer. The walls are interactive with your movement. Further, you can place yourself anywhere in the world in a true three dimensional interactive way. For example, in your room, you can walk the streets of Rome in real time interacting with real people in Rome who will need contact lenses. Do not worry about language differences. As you speak with an Italian, the Internet will automatically make it sound as if you are speaking Italian and vice versa. Remember you are in Italy real time via the Internet. You will be able even to feel the loose stones on the street. The mariner can imagine that this capability will eliminate public transportation. Just blink your eye and click your heels!

You will have access to all knowledge instantly. Kaku predicts that soon, perhaps much less than 100 years, as you walk the streets and focus on a person coming toward you, that person’s name and biographical information pops up on your contact lens. Not just certain familiar persons, every person will be identified by face recognition. Every person! The mariner likes this part because remembering names, among many other things, is increasingly difficult.

A new form of x-ray will give you Superman’s power to see through walls and other objects. The mariner began to wonder about all these powers. He has been around the world a bit. He knows that some men wear women’s panties because they are more comfortable and, perhaps, there are Freudian perceptions at play. If a man walks into a room where others wait for his presentation, what effect will there be if everyone knows the man is wearing panties?

Using the seemingly transportable power of being anywhere in the world, places like Manhattan will be overrun with people from everywhere – or maybe if someone transported themselves to Times Square, it would appear empty because everyone in Manhattan transported themselves somewhere else – or everyone in Times Square is from everywhere but Manhattan. The imagination runs wild.

Kaku says that the combination of speed of light communications with universal awareness will enable a global culture. Nationalism, radical and reactionary movements, insider power and financial moves will diminish if not disappear altogether. Everyone will know everyone in context and everyone will have absolute knowledge.

Finally, Michio Kaku says we will have the power of the gods to create life in any form – even new types of life like a short-necked Giraffe who will viciously bite your toes off. We will heal with hand-held devices seen on Startrek, track viruses at the viral level and destroy them before you even know you may be getting a cold. Any cellular irregularity will be destroyed by a special injection using your own DNA. Your doctor, insurance company, boss and mother-in-law will know these things as they happen. Thank goodness for the Internet.

The mariner is overwhelmed, entertained and feels exposed. It may be the beginning of a technical version of transcendentalism. Emerson wrote in his 1837 speech “The American Scholar“:

“So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, — What is truth? and of the affections, — What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will. …Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit.”

Indeed. The Internet will allow us to conform our life to the pure idea in our individual minds while in our living room. Shades of The Matrix – at least we don’t have to conform our life in a casket! Will we all transcend the evils of human institutions and social class disparity? Will we have enlightenment? Will everyone know that we don’t have enlightenment?

Ancient Mariner

 

Retirees are Valuable

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As the mariner grows older, ancillary skills fade. It is harder to build good woodwork. It is more tiresome to manage gardens. Ailments slow him physically. Boat repair is at a crawl. What remains in retirement and encroaching old age is a set of skills that are second nature and were honed, practiced and studied across a lifetime. Writers remain writers, researchers remain researchers, administrators and bookkeepers remain the same. It is what they know; it is what they have trained their brains to do for entire careers.

The same is true of a hundred jobs, whether in the home, or at the factory, or driving big rigs. They are expert at these lifelong skills.

The question, then, is why aren’t these expert skills still of value in the marketplace? We are healthier in old age; mental acuity extends further and further as science finds answers to longevity.

The answer of course, is prejudice against people past 55 unless they have power or money and even then, it’s the power and money that is the real value. If many could, they would take the power and money and put the old person out to pasture.

The mariner sees in himself a waste of extensive training in management methodologies. He sees a waste of the skills that managed $300,000,000 contracts and hundreds of people. Today he is in a Podunk town that has no projects (and no paid staff – a critical component).

What do older folk do? How do they carry their pride into old age? How do they leverage the wisdom of decades of experience and tested skills?

The more forceful and detail oriented administrators impose themselves on the body politic – involved in as much as they can possibly handle. But for planners, organizers, sophisticated leaders and planning folk, there is little use for them.

The mariner tried to teach team management to a group that was generally retired for a number of years. It was a useless exercise. By retirement age, there is little that can sway the lifetime of experiences that a person has used to shape a lifelong career.

The mariner has considered new career directions: elected office, county planning, joining a local firm in development, but none seems to congeal to his life pattern.

The mariner is destined, at some point, to seek the solitude and challenge of the sea. It is a dream.

Still, the issue remains: are older folk being shortsheeted in the public workplace? Maybe salaried jobs await us if we pursue the needs of our society.

Ancient Mariner

The Seasoned Retiree

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The statistics on the mariner’s blog show that most readers are between the ages of 23 and 50. This post is advice to them from an old sailor whose participation with those 23-50 youngsters is long cast in bronze never to come again.

The mariner lives in a small town where many are, well, seasoned retirees. He has been able to watch himself age in others; he is fully aware how aging itself tugs the elderly further into isolation. Friends and family pass on; society has less need of the elderly; injuries and decrepit bodies limit flexibility and strength. The mind falls into disuse that is not related to dementia but weakens mental agility just as a muscle is weakened from disuse.

In many cases, there is a hard choice to make between daily pain and drugs that ease pain at the cost of cognitive clarity. As one confronts one ailment after another, drugs are piled on drugs, smudging the line between how healthy the body is versus how ravaged the body’s subtle functions are for living normally.

Often, the elderly live waiting for the illness they cannot afford, the illness that will incapacitate them, the illness that will be their end – a feeling similar to waiting for the second shoe to fall. Yet, faced with these circumstances, they survive. They rise each morning to face the day with self-respect and purpose.

To the vast majority of you in younger generations, these feelings and circumstances are alien. You have too much to do, too much to discover, too many dreams and goals – there is no room for the sensations of aging to coexist. You are blessed with natural exuberance. You are in the prime of your life. This is as it should be. Every seasoned retiree has had their turn at your lifestyle.

Many seniors, more than you may think, overcome isolation and fight pain and injury tooth and nail. Many are socially and intellectually active. Many by necessity or by choice work beyond circumstances where it may be better to ease off. And many seniors, more than you think, have healthy and enjoyable lives well into seasoned retirement. However, the norm is a daily battle against isolation and not letting their fading vitality prevent them from enjoying life.

The mariner’s advice to the younger set borrows an old phrase: “Respect your elders.” The elderly have fought well battles you do not yet face at odds that grow against them every day. Yet they live. They buy groceries. They have feelings and friends. Be in awe of them for winning the battles that you, too, will encounter.

The immense desire in our society to make the fast dollar, cut losses, and prefer the younger applicant, too many times is at the cost of a fine mind and proven dependability. The American culture in particular must embrace the age of wisdom. The elderly are like tempered steel, shaped by long experience. The elderly have demonstrated perseverance, persistence and dependability. They are a tempering influence. Their years are golden.

Ancient Mariner

I Felt a Funeral in my Brain

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I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

by Emily Dickinson

Dickinson copy

Emily Dickinson takes us on a trip through our own funeral. To that last moment when there is nothing left to know. Nothing to participate in. nothing to share. Nothing to feel. It is finally over.

It is that moment with which we all are familiar. It is a moment we all know will come to pass. Will we feel, as Emily suggests, the drop down and down…and finish knowing?

Some may in their hearts seek this joy. The joy that will leave pain behind. A joy that replaces insecurity, inadequacy, anxiety, depression and defeat.

Some may in their hearts not care about that last moment. There is no joy, no sorrow, and no loss. There is no feeling, too. Nothing of value to miss. The drop down and down to finish knowing is not a step away from before.

When some may feel that funeral in their brain, they bring great anticipation of release into a believed existence far away, that upon finished knowing, move through that moment to paradise unknown.

Some may, in the service of others, have arrived by fire or bullet or starvation or oppression in behalf of those unknown, will they have regret? To those still knowing, the vanquished that drop down have great meaning. To the one that drops down and down, do they wonder the worth?

Perhaps as we feel the funeral in our brain, we look back at what is still knowing, still not finished. As we drop down, we become free of the bonds that held us. Do we see, at that moment, what life ought to be? Is our last knowing of the living finally filled with divine insight and understanding? Is Grace upon us as we finish knowing?

We will be missed by those who love us, who knew us, who knew our place in the world. That, too, will drop down, down and finish knowing beyond our own. It is then that we entirely pass from knowing and being known – then an ancient stone or an urn unknown or ashes cast back to the earth and never known.

To those of us waiting our turn at the funeral, are there things that must be done? Are there rights to be righted? What prepares you for the trip down, down and to finish knowing?

Ancient Mariner

Weighing In

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Oh my. The mariner weighed himself this morning. 222 pounds. He has been growing like a potato, perhaps with the potato’s help. Quickly he has moved from 198 pounds last autumn.

No guilt involved. The mariner, as many others may do, blames it on the frigid weather, the terrible winter just now showing signs of faltering. Further, the mariner has a troublesome back condition that hurts just enough to deter normal activity. However, winter is over, the garden is stirring and spring labor cannot be avoided.

The vegetable garden will be doubled in size this year plus a fence must be built around that garden to deny access to rabbits. Rabbits are the scourge of gardeners, especially in the mariner’s small town where there are no predators. He has encouraged bow hunters to kill a few. That has worked well but with minimum effect on the hoards of rabbits still prevailing. The garden walk must be paved. It has sat undone for two years.

So there is a plan afoot to lose weight. It involves more exercise despite his back’s complaint and it involves selecting a diet plan.

The mariner believes any diet plan requiring special ingredients or exercises he could not do when he was fifteen should be discarded.

Promoters selling “better” diet methods can claim better success by using a mathematical process known as base expectancy analysis (BEA). This is a large table of selected items that may affect other items in the table. A successful use of BEA tied mesothelioma to asbestos. Lung cancer and smoking were linked using BEA. Base expectancy analysis, believe it or not, is the same analytical model as Bingo. The players (experiment participants) are given a limited population ∑ (the cards) then random values (balls) are applied that are restricted to the values within ∑. Eventually, a truth table emerges (someone shouts “Bingo.”) Many games are played until a pattern of winners emerges. These winners have something special that enables them to win more than others. Their cards are examined to determine which sequence of balls was most productive. That sequence of balls is the new insight that provides for better living.

Have you noticed there is a new result from some study every month that seems contradictory to a former study? The diet promoters are playing Bingo. Someone else may win Bingo more times on Thursday than they did on Wednesday.

For those who want to know more about bingo, the formula is Σ xiP(xi).

Back to the weight issue, the mariner’s history of weight gain/loss may provide insight into how to lose weight. When the mariner retired at age 63, he weighed 249 pounds. His work environment contained many meetings with donuts, similar sweet products and many lunches, dinners and lounges that were not exactly crackers and skim milk.

Once retired, the mariner lost 25 pounds in six months. The secret is to have major surgery like a knee replacement, which puts you on drugs that suppress hunger as well as most other activities in life. Then the mariner went on a diet; it was the Atkins diet. This diet requires that one eat nothing but meat. The mariner lost steadily to 200 pounds at a rate of 2 pounds per week. Since then, his weight has bounced around this number plus or minus 5 pounds. Until the winter made him gain weight.

Last night on the Aljazeera channel, a Doctor reported that a study showed that saturated fat did not cause heart and cardiovascular disease. Based on this round of Bingo, I have decided to start Atkins again.

This does not mean that the seemingly more rational diets like vegan, supplement and enzyme diets do not work. People on these diets are quite thin. Anyone who has the willpower to eat less than they wish will be thin. Try the canned sardine diet. One can have one tin each for breakfast lunch and dinner. One is allowed one different vegetable at each meal – preferably to provide fiber. You will lose weight. We can go on and on about antioxidants and other chemical analyses but it boils down to less eating. Here’s another diet: eat a hard boiled egg for breakfast, a small bowl of mixed fruit for lunch, and for dinner, have ½ cup each of two vegetables and 4 ounces of meat. Snacking is cheating. That should work. The point is we can invent endless diets if we had the time and desire to do so.

So the mariner has settled on Atkins until 190 is reached. Atkins worked before; it should work again. After all, the Doctor on Aljazeera said it was okay.

No one mentions that a sustained diet only of meat will not only lose weight, one will also lose a liver. Well, last time the mariner lost a knee. I guess losing something other than weight is part of the diet.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

Nebraska Revisited

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This post is in response to an offline retort to the last post, Nebraska, where the mariner suggested there is a mindset associated with one’s age, not one’s activity:

“Each of us is required by the order of our genetic code to move along through these generations as we age.”

The respondent’s objections were examples of activity. The mariner agrees with the examples offered as demonstrative of a given age. All were activities appropriate to an age related behavior. The respondent is on the right track, however, with the suggestion that wisdom is an element of old age.

Is wisdom dependent on IQ? Is wisdom dependent on extroversion or introversion? Is wisdom dependent on wealth? Is wisdom dependent on what kind of activities one performs? No. Wisdom is a constant among all older folk. The relative value of a given person’s wisdom may change just as the size of a circle changes the relative value of PI. It is generally accepted that “wisdom” is a constant with older age. Wisdom is not smartness. Homo sapiens is smartest in the late teens and early twenties. Countless studies have shown that smartness has an exponential downturn through the rest of the lifespan. Still, wisdom emerges.

If a five-year-old cannot be wise, perhaps they are innocent. They do not know that they are innocent, they just are – it comes with the age.

The teenager, awash in chemicals and self-examination, is in a state of discovery – without trying. They just are.

By the time one is thirty-five, discovery diminishes as maturity becomes the physiological phase. It is the age of accomplishment. How well one accomplishes is a measure of activity (see activity theory). Nonetheless, it is the age where Homo sapiens has the best mix of experience, knowledge, and self-assuredness – without trying.

It is the mariner’s feeling that, holistically, our species is not designed to live much longer than the age of accomplishment as strength and health become issues. Without artificial life extension provided by clothing, artificial heat, improvements in health and medicine, etc, most would increasingly fail and die. Should one live beyond the prime age of accomplishment, participation in accomplishment begins to wane. Yet if one lives beyond critical usefulness, one is considered “wise” simply because they have survived the vagaries associated with long life.

In years gone by, it was interesting that Johnny Carson would invite centenarians to be guests on his television show and inevitably ask them what the secret to longevity was. The answers were often funny but seldom, if ever, scientifically correct.

Wisdom is a constant among all old folk. It means that old folk feel less of a primordial need to accomplish as their mindset has moved on to “be wise”. This can be depressing to some and a relief to others. No matter the emotions or “activity,” physiologically, one is old – just as the child is innocent, the youth discovers, the mature accomplishes, the old are wise. And none of the above even knows that their physiological clock is controlling these underlying patterns.

Perhaps, with another millennia or two, our bodies will catch up with our brains.

In earlier history, the Japanese had an interesting approach to leaders who grew too old. They were given absolute authority to pass judgment on a situation – when asked. They were given supernumerary status because of their wisdom but did not have to don helmets or swords. Consider the U.S. Supreme Court….

Ancient Mariner

 

 

 

Thoughts Beyond Nebraska

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The mariner saw the movie Nebraska recently. Bruce Dern provided an excellent performance portraying oldness, isolation and social conflict that often comes with old age. The mariner was pleased with Woody Grant’s (Dern’s character) ability to deal with these elderly issues. It was a good movie. The mariner recommends the movie particularly to those who have a lifetime behind them.

 

The simple plot and observation of Woody Grant opens the mind to refreshed empathy about senior citizens. The passing of time is a passage through many phases of life from infancy to the centenarian. There is a general assumption that there are four generations in a meaningful lifetime, the growing generation, the creative generation, the accomplishment generation and the retirement generation. Each of us is required by the order of our genetic code to move along through these generations as we age.

 

Living in the generations of creativity and accomplishment are self-rewarding and enable us to feel that we are important to society whether we are engineers and politicians, or factory workers or engaged in retail, whether we are engaged in social and health services. However, toward the end of the third generation, our bodies tell us that things are changing. Our attitudes begin to shift into a feeling that accomplishment becomes hollow and maybe our roles are a bit out of tune with the creative generation.

 

Finally, we are retired or at retirement age – it doesn’t matter, we are bound by our genetic instructions. Out of the creative and accomplishment phases of society, we begin to feel that we are not the first team anymore. A few of the elderly have either the money or the opportunity to continue to participate but the underlying genetic structure will not deny that we are passing beyond the dynamic moment in society when newness is created and enforced by productivity.

 

Because of medical advances, the fourth generation is living longer, on its way to creating a fifth generation: the very aged. What is the impact of old people living longer and longer? Medical research promises trouble free life until you literally wear out around 159-200 years of age.

 

Yet society’s idea of the work span is not respected beyond the age of 55. Older folk do not fit into the requirements of creativity or accomplishment. They are fit for lesser and lesser roles in the productive generation. Were it not for the few surviving pensions, Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, the elderly would have no financial basis for continuing to survive – not considering the requirement to live to 150 years.

 

There are government roles in this situation. Some form of tax increase must be applied to the aging issue. The boomer retirement bulge does not make it easier. Let’s face the fact that we are an aging population. This is a disadvantage in international politics, where India, China, Argentina and Brazil have rapidly increasing populations in the creative and accomplishment range. Still, the United States has the creative edge and must find ways to integrate the wisdom of the fourth generation into the fabric of a productive role.

 

Ancient Mariner

 

Spring comes in May – then +100°

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There are a few who say spring is coming, then summer. The mariner is wary of these prognostications. Changing the time back to standard does not fool him. There is ice and snow all about and as he and his wife walked to the Post Office and back, the 2-knot wind had a sharp bite to it.

It was three years ago that summer came in February. It was 75 to 85 degrees for at least two weeks. Trees and bulbs began to bloom. The grass had to be mowed. Then March came. Coldest March in recent memory; killed many plants and all the buds and blooms. No apples, cherries or pears that year and no narcissus, either. Cost the mariner over a hundred dollars in ornamentals and landscape shrubs. Two years ago, the summer brought nine straight days of +100° weather – more plant kill-off. It is an old saying that owning a boat is like pouring money into a hole in the water. Try gardening in Iowa. Warning: you have to dig your own holes.

The mariner has always proclaimed that the Midwest, undisturbed for thousands of years, was a vast grassy plain because nothing but grass can tolerate the vagaries of the weather. In the southern plains, all the way to northern Texas, there wasn’t much of anything because of the frequent droughts. Visit Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas and Montana – and Iowa. Thomas Jefferson called the area The Great Western Desert alluding to the fact that nothing grew but grass.

Nevertheless, the mariner has hoisted his 17-foot Daysailer off the trailer for repair to a dozen spots. The poor thing has been in drydock for three years in an implement shed and is as dirty as a pig in _ _ _ _.

The first job is to put new lines on the centerboard so it can stay locked in the down position. Then it is a matter of giving the boat a bath in Ketone to remove streaks, stains and scum. Then its time to heal wounds and minor cracks with fiberglass work. Finally, the whole boat gets a 1000 grit sanding. Then the hull receives new paint trim and finally a complete waxing. That’s just the hull and deck. Working on masts, booms, deck hardware, new sails, and new sailing lines is another process.

This work will not be done by the spring equinox. There is hope, once the garden work diminishes, that the boat will be sail-ready for shakedown exercises at Lake Rathbun before it’s too late to sail in the Midwest.

If there’s time in October when the mariner visits the Annapolis Boat Show, the boat will be free to run on the Chesapeake Bay.

Screw the weather. Reef the mainsail and cast the mooring lines. He has a heated workshop.

Ancient Mariner