Free at last? (6/4/2023)

The first few days of retirement are completed. We both retired on Wednesday; I attended my wife’s retirement lunch on Tuesday and she came to mine on Wednesday. We were both introduced to colleagues and supervisors (at the last minute of our employment). The only thing we often could say was “I heard so much about you.” In one instance at my wife’s luncheon one of her colleagues whispered in my ear: “and it is all true.” This was when I said that to her boss.

I can only tell you that it is true what people tell you, retirement is not for the weary. Time to relax, hell no! I already had two inquiries about jobs and if I would be so nice to apply for them or at least send in my resume. These past two days were used to unpack what we brought home from the office and to organize our new lives at home. My wife already had lunch with a very good (retired) friend, who can’t wait for more companionship. I had dinner with her husband, also one of my best friends. Saturday and Sunday were not different, we were constantly on the go. No rest and relaxation here, yet.

Of course, in addition to all this, the past few days have been filled with discussions about our finances. Will we have enough money to maintain our now past lifestyle? On top of that it seems that my health insurance is screwed up. This ranges from Medicare part B to the supplemental part. It is a complete mess. Hopefully everything will work out; however, I better do not get sick in June. Folks at Social Security appear to be so inept, you tell them that you are retiring on June 1 and apply for Medicare at the same time and then did not put anything in the remarks section about wanting Medicare to start on June 1 which I assumed would be self-evident, but no! Moreover, there are no instructions that you had to fill out a starting date. Whomever entered the data did not bother to ask or question things. I learned assume consists of three words: ass, u and me. In other words, I should have known better, and it really made an ass out of me and guess what I think of you (u) right now, social safety net? Oh well, this will come to pass, if I get sick, I might need to start a go-fund-me page to pay for my medical bills this month.

A quick report on last week’s travel. My last trip for the state was to Abingdon. It was an emotional trip for me at times. I greatly enjoy the Southwest, or better the southwestern part of the state. While they are more conservative, I can somehow understand why and accept it. They feel left behind as I think I outline in a previous post. The two days teaching was good, I met with a lot of folks that I have taught over my 14-year career as an instructor for the state. Moreover, I got to eat and drink in places I visited before. It was a fun trip. All I can say is that I will return to the area, but now socially and to explore. This was not my last visit.

Since we are now the proud owners of a camping van (I mentioned this for the first time here), my wife and I are talking about maybe producing a more detailed travel blog, or maybe even starting a YouTube channel for me, where I can talk more about nature, bonsai, stormwater, and our travels. We will see what is going to happen in the future. Stay tuned folks, but as I promised, this blog will go on! By the way, our first trip was to Belle Isle State Park, a place we visited before for some day hikes. It was recommended to me by one of my students in Lynchburg as a great site to go camping, and I dare say it was great. The fun part there was that during our trip we ran into a past student of mine from Staunton (2-hour drive from Belle Isle). He works for VDOT (Virginia Department of Transportation) and was on visiting the area as well. Crazy when you know so many folks around the state. It somehow amazed my wife how well known I am. Retirement is a double edged sword; I have to behave myself. Well, not really.

Our setup at Belle Isle, we had fun.

My wife and Radar enjoying the outside and waiting for that beer.

On the Creeper Trail in Abingdon

A selfie in my last class in Abingdon

Sailing meditates me (Any open water, 6/28/2016)

One of the books I am reading discusses the healing power of water; Wallace Nichols describes in his book Blue Mind: "The Surprising Science That Shows How Being Near, In, On, or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected and Better at What You Do."  It is  a fun and and fascinating book in which I often see myself.  Nichols' book has a similar theme as Richard Louv's books on Nature Deficit Disorder in that Lowe talks about green nature and Nichols talks about blue nature.  But regardless, whether it is the greens or the blues: nature has it.

A picture I took earlier this year on Catalina Island in Maine.  This picture captures the blue and the green that are so important in my life.

What struck me in one of the passages in Nichols' book was his statement about how someone mentioned that once you are near water you do not need to meditate, but that "water meditates you."  I found that a profound statement and it stuck with me.  If you read my previous post <here> where I wrote about when I visit the beach, how I can just sit in the waves for hours; let the water wash over me; forget everything; live in the moment; wait for the next wave; yes, empty my mind; and let it be. It kind of sounds like the definition of meditation to me.  I don't do it consciously, the water does it for me, the water meditates me.  Truthfully, being in nature often does that for me too (I write about it <here>).  Probably less so, because I have to pay attention to what my dogs do, and keep up with my wife who walks faster than I do (we need to get the heart rate up, you know.  Honestly, there is a time for that too.).

I took this picture of a boot at a mooring buoy in the York River some time ago, and I am not sure if I shared it with you already but scenes like this, or doing this, meditates me. 

I was discussing this concept of water meditating me with a good friend at church the other day.  Doc Robin is a band leader, self proclaimed shaman and the leader of the Earth Rising Community in our Unitarian Church.  "I often think that church interferes with my spirituality ... The spirituality that I can get from nature", he quipped when we discussed the concept of nature (or water) meditating you instead of you meditating in nature (or on or near the water).  So there is something to it; being in nature or water, or being able to see it (even in pictures) is good for you, it heals the body and the mind, it lowers anxiety and lowers the blood pressure.

Last week I experienced this again when we went sailing.  You really cannot think about much else when being at the rudder and trying to maintain course and keeping the wind in the sail.  The winds were around 15 knots, which were fairly strong for our small 25 foot boat.  Nothing dangerous, but you need to keep attention to what you are doing, stay in the moment.  Yes, there were dolphins, birds and wonderful weather, but just looking backwards or not paying attention for a few seconds results in a course change, loose the wind out of your sail, or maybe get too much. Even occasionally looking on my tablet (GPS) to see where we were resulted in a course shift.  It could also cause your boat to come about or to gibe.  You had to be in the moment.  I really could not think of anything else that was going on in my life than being right in the moment and concentrating on my sailing, staying on course and reading the wind and the water.

You want to see two people experiencing flow?  Here you have it!  My wife and I look like we are truly enjoying ourselves and I am concentrating on keeping the boat on course and properly into the wind.

Granted, I do not have an autopilot as many people I know have on their boat.  I am not sure if I want one.  I know it would be nice when I solo sail or need to do something in a hurry, but in the past when I sailed on a friend's boat with autopilot it felt that I somehow lost that intimate touch with the water and the wind.  It was great to be on the water and I loved it; it was so much better than being on land, and of course you always have to pay attention, but still, I like the rudder in my hand.  Granted, I have not sailed in my own boat for longer than 4 or 5 hours at a stretch, so time will tell.  On top of that, I always have someone to take over when I have to take a pee-pee break.

After reading Nichols I realized that in reality, our sailing trip "meditated me", there was no time for distractions.  Mihály Csikszentmihálályi describes this as flow.  Flow is an interesting concept that I learned about from a book that he published in 1990 under the same title (boy that was a long time ago that I read that book).  When you are in flow, you are completely absorbed in and energized by what you are doing (no television watching does not count).  Healing at 15 degrees or more, with 15 knot winds and thoroughly enjoying yourself, not thinking about anything else (as I show you in the photograph above), now that is flow.  Kayaking through the marshes, looking at birds and snails hanging on to the marsh grasses is also flow.

I took this picture while kayaking this weekend of all the snails hanging on the the smooth cord grass (Spartina) during high tide.

Think about it folks, get out there, let nature meditate you!  Blue or green, it it good for your physical and mental health.  Go with the flow!

We went kayaking this past weekend.  Another advanture in the blue and green.  My wife took this picture of me, she really had to call be a few times to get my attention and take this picture.  I was absorbed by being out there in it.

Que sera sera, what ever will be will be, really? (3/8/2016)

Of late I've been interacting with people or hearing about people who seem to be so fatalistic, and just take life laying down.  I went out to the field with an absolutely great guy, who in is mid forties and already has developed type two diabetes.  He warned me about it, since he had to take an insulin shot at the lunch table, to make sure I did not have to deal with someone in a sugar coma later on during our work in the field.

Not that it grossed me out or so watching someone shoot up, it just upset me to see someone so young and nice to be so matter of fact about it.  He was like: "My grandmother has it, my mother has it, so I knew it was just a matter of time before I developed it."  He went on telling me how skinny his grandmother was (he is not that skinny; he is actually a big bear).  But, he told me it was to be expected since it was familial.  He continued to tell me that the insulin shots actually caused him to gain some weight, which if you believe the books would make a person even more insulin dependent.  More than half of the people in my wife's office have the same affliction of being either pre-diabetic or having full-flung type 2, and yes there are a few who also blame their genes or as I sometimes say, "their uncle Bob."  But then, I seem to blame anything on Bob!

So I come home with this story nagging my brain, and my wife comes home from the field after talking with a guy who is convinced that he will be dead in a year.  All his relatives died by the age of 60 except his father who died at ripe old age of 63, so at the age of 59 he figured his years were limited.  In other words, who cares, he might as well throw in the towel, give up and let his life and health go to hell, since he is going to die after all: a self fulfilling prophecy?  He basically summoned my wife to get his business in order before he died.

Waiting for a food cart in Richmond this afternoon, few people know what their health future will be, or maybe few know what it actually is or they are cavalier about it.  I know that when I travel I don't often eat the most healthy, but at least I try to get some exercise in to offset my diet.

I have just been so bothered by people taking things lying down and taking things spoon fed.  When I teach my students I try to help them think, understand and appreciate what lies beneath it all.  I want to instill a wonder lust; a curiosity.  I know it is often appreciated.  Sadly, all that I see lately is people just blindly following demagogues (politicians); they seem to follow the same paths where the rest of the herd is going without asking questions; or even personally concerning themselves, they let their relatives (uncle Bob) and parents rules their health, life and longevity.

What lies beneath it all.  A dear friend and fellow teacher uses this picture in one of his presentations and it is emblematic of it all.  We need to look beneath it all Look at the root instead of being spoon fed.  The hammer sharks here also symbolize my I need to work (hammer) on myself physically and mentally.

Darn it, if I believe this, I should be having treatment for prostrate cancer by now, because that is what my father had at my age.  I was tested and I'm doing fine.  I also made sure I did not suffer from any brain aneurysms as my mother had and I suspect her mother had.  I will "Go my own way" damn it, just like that popular Fleetwood Mac song.  I know I need to clean up my life, but then again, I am not as bad as some others that I know.  It is such a damn cliche, but such a good one: "getting old is not for sissies," I am stiff, I hurt, but I'm going to fight getting old all the damn way!  That is why I sail, why I bike, why I hike, why I blog, practice yoga, try to meditate, live in the moment, and why I still threaten my wife that I will retire when I am 70.  It is just that I want to live my life my own way, with my wife and my friends, without people telling me how to live it or what to expect based on some preconceived idea or model.

Knowing how essential exercise and moving is I made sure that during my tripto Front Royal Virginia today I stopped over at a point where the Appalachian Train crossed the highway and I went for a walk.  My fitbit reported I walked for an hour and a half for 5640 steps, average heartbeat was 106 with top rate at 159.  I climbed over 500 feet at times.  Great exercise!

Shawsville (7/24/2014)

Taught two courses at different sides of the state this week.  Kind of like a traveling salesman.   I drove to Fairfax on Tuesday evening after having an MRI of my head (boy that was a different experience).  The MRI itself was absolutely not as bad as everybody had warned me about.  But then, I am convinced that all my yoga practice helped with it.  Shavasana really helped.

Then it was down to Wytheville after a full day of teaching in Fairfax.  I left around 4 pm on Wednesday and got in around 9 that evening.  After teaching again on Thursday I stayed overnight to recuperate and took it easier going back on Friday.   By taking it easier I mean not going 8 or 10 miles an hour over the speed limit, trying to make some time, kind of in the frame of mind of "hurry up to relax."  This probably is a contradiction, and I am not sure if it works anyway; you area kind of wired after a five hour rat race on the interstate at 80 mph.  So on the way back I made sure that I consistently only exceeded the speed limit by 4 miles per hour (if that) and I actually got off the highway for a while.

So I got of the interstate in Christiansburg and actually rode highway 11 down the mountain.  Highway 11 is a nice twisty (down the) mountain road that is actually really quiet with some nice vistas.  I am sure it does not put many extra miles on the vehicle but it is away from the rat race of the interstate.  I took the picture below in Shawsville. No idea what I took a picture of, but is was a pretty farm building.  Wikipedia does not tell me much about Shawsville either; although I am sure it has a rich history, in addition to being wiped out by the Shawnee Indians in 1756.

Eventually I got back on the highway and joined the rat race back to Richmond.

One of the things I taught my students Thursday was "to think outside the box," while understanding that most of the time they will need to enforce the law and regulations.  Yes, there may still be times that they can, may and even should improvise, even though they are restrained by those darn laws and regulations.

Think outside the darn box!

Well that's what Friday felt like.  I think it felt like that for everyone; for me, kind of obeying the speed limit and getting of the main road and driving the back roads, at least for a little bit.  For other it seemed that they were all living in the left lane on Friday.  It was amazing here I was driving 70 (which was the speed limit) and I was passing people in the right lane.  I even had people moving over to the right to let me pass and then more back to the left lane.  It was so bad that I adapted the Beatles tune Yellow Submarine into "We all live in the left lane."  Guess even they were thinking outside the box, but I'm not sure if that was the right thing to do.  We learn in traffic school that most fatalities happen in the left lane (but that would be thinking inside the box).  Oh well.

Getting back to Richmond, even a transformer thought outside the box.  It seemed that it exploded underground, just outside our offices.  All traffic lights were out and our building only had emergency lights and was evacuated.  Dropped the car off and continued my road trip home.  A busy week indeed.

Cup Plant (7/16/2014)

Our daughter bought this plant for us at a native plant sale in our area, and we had no idea what it was.  I am a botanist by training and have done a lot of wetland work in the past.  This definitively shows I have been away from playing with plants way too long; but after getting my plant identification books out, it was not difficult to identify this plant as a “cup plant” or Silphium perfoliatum. 

Cup plant is quite an interesting plant.  The plant’s leaves connect and form a cup around the stem which holds water that is used by birds and insects.  This of course makes me wonder about mosquitoes, but as my favorite quote of the week goes: “It is what it is.”  The web teaches me that the plant was used for human food (the young leaves seem to be ok, when cooked).  Furthermore, parts of the plant were used for medicinal purposes by some of the Indian tribes.  It appears to be able to treat everything from chest pain to asthma to liver disease to excessive menstruation.  Cup plant is high in various compounds that may have value as medicine.

Interestingly, the plant I studied for my Ph.D. research (broom snakeweed or Guiterrezia sarothrea) had some of the same medicinal properties.  I once read that the Native Americans used broom snakeweed (which has some of the same compounds as cup plants) for birth control (it causes abortions in livestock).

Plants hold a lot of secrets.  They have compounds and combination of compounds that can cure a person’s ailments or kill them.  They produce compounds that prevent other plants from growing nearby (also known as allelopathy or what I call chemical warfare between plants).  I have always had an interest in allelopathy and the field of ethnobotany.  As a Ph.D. student, I spent a week at Stanford discussing the intricacies of who owns certain plants and the chemicals in them.  The question was if a pharmaceutical company can patent a chemical in a plant that only grows in one country, or if they would need to pay royalty.  The same is the case if they found a medicinal use by studying a native tribe; would they have to pay royalty to the tribe from medicine they develop as a result of that study?  It is a fascinating subject and fun to think about it again. 

Anyway, it is also important to realize that when plants become rare, or go extinct we might lose some very important properties that we have not yet discovered.