Musings on getting old (10/30/2021)

One thing I am starting to realize more and more is that the saying: “Old age is not for the faint of heart” or maybe the way Betty Davis put it: “Old age ain’t for sissies” is real. So here I was checking out at the pharmacy after buying medicine for our 15-year-old dog Jake, who is still on his last legs, when I got the call that my 94-years-old father-in-law had fallen for the umpteenth time and was on his way to the emergency room. This was all after complaining a day earlier on our daily walk that my back, hip and knees hurt and that I am getting slower.

Oh well, who am I to complain. My wife comes back from the emergency room with the story that the doctor there tells my father-in-law, that since he is close to the end he might as well enjoy what is left instead of trying to prolong it as much as possible with drugs that have side effects that make life miserable. The nurse tells him he looks great, and when he says: “hell no” she tells him: “you don’t get to see what I get to see here in the emergency room.” My wife and I came to the conclusion that when you suffer you become selfish, and you have it worse than everyone else in this world; and yes, so do I.

I have written a few posts about getting old or getting older. But never about one of my major complaints with age: peeing! When I was young, we had peeing contests, who could pee the furthest. Now, especially in the morning, you wake up and lay in bed and boy you have to go and it comes slowly and not much. But at least it takes the pressure off the bladder, and then after walking around for five or ten minutes, all the sudden it hits again, and finally there is release or is it relief? I wonder what it will be like 10 or maybe 20 years from now.

My symbol of being able to pee a good distance!

But hopefully I will keep my mind, if not for me, at least for my wife. I think it would be the hardest for a spouse to watch their husband or wife lose their mind to Alzheimer or some other form of dementia. My father-in-law went through that, and it devastated him. It was his second wife, and they were married only seven years or so. She was obviously not my wife’s mother. In other words, while it was terrible watching her and my father-in-law go through it, it would have been worse if it was your own mother, and you would have known her all your life instead of only about ten years. I hope I never do this to my wife and daughter.

Wow, I better quit. The past post was about politics in our county, this one is introspective. What a difference a few days make. But it is important to think about: quality of life, enjoy it while you still can, enjoy others. Especially when you are young; however, even this old guy or my 94-year-old father-in-law can and should fight depression and enjoy life to the fullest. We only have one life to live and after that? Who knows.

Our County Politics (10/28/2021)

OK gang, if you do not like my politics, or when I write about my political, educational and sociological opinions, now is your time to close or skip this post, because I have something on my mind that I need to vent.

So here I go!

On Sunday, our local newspaper published an article on how our county was worried about its tax base. We are having a lot of lots and buildings in our county that are vacant. Previously, I read an article how a large grocery chain (Kroger) relocated with the promise that they would like to attract some good business into their old, vacated store. But no, a church renovated it; result being, they were nonprofit and tax exempt. In other words, a loss of tax revenue to our county. This has been an epidemic in our very conservative county; empty store fronts or invading churches. Our county officials are truly worried about it, and I can understand why, loss of voters, salary cuts?

Now it gets better. Like every good conservative county in Virginia, we need to be against what they call critical race theory, evolution, global warming, and all those other science things. Let’s not talk about vaccinations. So, the county officials are introducing an ordinance outlawing all this “crap” in order to dumb down our schools and ignore (whitewash) history, science and social justice and what really happened in our country’s past. Slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation, it never happened! The Civil War was either just a little disagreement among friends or aggression from the northern states. Who cares if half the county will be underwater 100 years from now? As long as we make money now and cut taxes (get votes); we will not be alive, and our greatgrandchildren be damned!

Now I am not necessarily anti-religious as most of you know, but I do trend liberal. But these short-sighted folks do not understand that the wealthiest counties and cities have the best, most well-rounded education systems in the world, have a gig-economy, can bike or walk to their grocery stores that have a great supply of foods, and have great non-chain funky restaurants and coffee shops. Limiting education causes wealthy educated folk to migrate out of these localities, only to be replaced by less educated poorer folks that commute to work and to these nice areas. Not that this is bad, we need them too. However, this generally will lead to lower property values, dollar general stores and Wallmarts, a lower tax base and a slow economic spiral downwards towards a new status quo.

No, I am not elitist, racist or whatever, far from it. We need a combination of people, everybody has value, whether you are an airplane pilot, a university professor, a teacher, or a garbage man. However, I am just living in a county where I am observing something disturbing: the complete contempt for a well-rounded education. Folks appear anti-education and want to tell educators what to teach their children. If so, why don’t they educate their children themselves, homeschool your kids damn it?

But again, education brings wealth. So does a livable community, including parks, greenspace, sidewalks, bike paths, funky restaurants and coffee shops as opposed to chains, and maybe even some limited public transportation. That will bring in the young, affluent, tax paying folks, the gig-economy that will pay the salary of the county supervisors. Something our board of supervisors apparently refuse to see and acknowledge.

Yes, it is nice to live here and wake up and find something like this guy in your back or front yard.  Or maybe not.  It is difficult to grow a nice yard without building a fence, and that is just a metaphor for what is happening in society including here in this county.  The conservatives trying to keep the liberals out.  

Bonsai spirituality (10/14/2021)

A recent bonsai YouTube video that I watched was somewhat different. Peter Chan from Herrons Bonsai was interviewing an ex thug or reformed criminal about his path to bonsai and nature combined with it his straightening out, and finding of religion. Claud Jackson wrote a book about his journey: “From Guns to God.” While I am not going to discuss the book (I have not read it), religion (I am not particularly religious or believe in their or any god, regular readers know I am a Unitarian and more a pantheist), I do have a couple of issues I want to discuss here. This discussion just brought some of these thoughts to mind.

Now I am a great fan of Peter’s videos and instruction, and while this video was not about trimming or working on plants, it was the second or third one that he has done on the connection between the mind (or soul) and our hobby. This one disappointed me a bit and that was because in my eyes, he did not go deep enough. Understandably so? Maybe, Claud is 6’8” and Peter is only 5’7”. Be your own judge and watch it yourself.

Many of you know, I am a naturalist, biologist, a person who strongly believes in forest bathing or Shinrin-yoku. I have written extensively about it and even presented a sermon in my church about it. I actually wrote a draft sermon that compared growing a bonsai to growing a church.  Being out in nature helps me meditate and so does working on my trees. During those times I just live in the moment and lose my perception of time and space. Being a biologist at times I cannot help trying to find a scientific explanation in my mind to the phenomenon that I am seeing or try to identify a plant or a fern that I stumble upon. But that is living in the moment and not thinking about the other things in life.

This was what was lacking in Peter’s interview with Claud in my eyes. They were dancing around the subject and never getting there. For someone who is studying to get ordained as a minister of the church of England I was disappointed by the lack of spirituality during the discussion.

Why the hell am I growing bonsai? It is something I have asked myself many times over the years. Is it a spiritual thing? Probably not; at least not when I started. I was just fascinated by the fact that you could make trees look so miniature. It all started with a visit to Longwood Gardens in late 1977. We were just married, and it was our first visit to the in-laws in Delaware. Longwood has a nice bonsai exhibit and I fell in love with the idea of growing miniature trees. I remember visiting the National Arboretum a few years later and that did it.

My spiritual journey with bonsai started a lot later. It was not until we settled here in Virginia (2000) that I was really bitten by the bug again. I started to take it serious again eight or so years ago. Yes, I had trees ever since we finally decided to “permanently” settle in the U.S. in 1986. As a good Dutchman we collected a few houseplants, and I befriended a guy who ran a nursery and off I went. I still have some of the trees I acquired at that time, although, as I mentioned in at least one of my posts, since I ignored them for some time on top of not knowing what to do with them, you would definitely not know that they are more than 30 years old. For one, I am not going to let you cut them and count their growth rings. However, they did not have YouTube at the time and the magazines and books did not push me hard enough to be that adventurous or extreme in cutting roots etc. Despite all that, I still love to tell visitors that these trees are older than or as old as my daughter.

Whether it is working with miniature nature or walking in big nature, I enjoy it and it all has become somewhat spiritual to me. Believe it or not, I talk to my trees; I tell them what I am going to do to them. Maybe I am going insane, and I am talking to myself, but it is a good way to remember things, thinking out loud. While pruning and discuss choices with myself, it is meditative.

It is not different when I walk in the woods. I love to linger, stop for a second, look at a trunk of a tree, touch it, feel it, see how the roots spread; take a picture of a mushroom, a sign of a symbiont, a perfect union. Now I need to start thinking about creating some bonsai forests. One of my favorite YouTubers Nigel Saunders from the Bonsai Zone is really into that, and he has some really cool forests or landscapes. He put in pathways and imagines people walking through the landscapes. I am still too timid to do something like that, although I have plans with a set of crab apples plants that I have.

Just a trunk of a dogwood tree that I walked by during a hike last weekend.  I love the bark of dogwoods and I am planning to dig up a seedling this winter and will try to grow one in a pot.  Wish me luck.

If you are just starting out on a bonsai journey, on a forest bathing journey, or even a spirituality journey, check these two bonsai guys out. Peter has at least two discussions on spirituality, while Nigel used to take you out on his walks and bike rides through the woods near his home. Nigel would explore trees and landscapes during outings but has not done this much lately. He has been way too busy building a greenhouse or his plant room. Explore my blog posts and check out the keywords root, nature, forest bathing, trees, bonsai, spirituality and alike. Come back, as I mentioned before, I will try to be less political and concentrate more on bonsai, and be more educational, environmental, and spiritual.

Not knowing what you want (9/29/2021)

My last installment I wrote about the crossroads I was at and my trip to Maine. During this trip, I had time to hike, and spend a lot of time in nature. The area we visited in Maine has a lot of natural preserves owned by foundations that are open to the public, which were absolutely wonderful. We also visited the arboretum in Augusta and a State Park. Everything to do with nature and plants really floats my boat. My daughter and I spent our time identifying ferns and looking at other plants.

One of the photographs I took in coastal Maine at the Wolfe's Neck Woods State Park.  One of the few state run places.

Vacations are nice that way; no pressure to watch the news, my daughter and partner cooked, and I had more time to catch up on my reading. Just great therapy for a few days before getting back to the grind of working. I am reminded of the fact why many folks in Europe have six weeks vacations compared to our measly one to three weeks. I strongly believe that vacation actually increases the productivity at work. I have noticed that mine has gone up these two weeks since I have been back. In the past, I explained to my supervisor that when I get stuck in my course design, it is best for me to go for long walks in the woods and mull things over. Honestly, I am not kidding, I really play things out in my head while walking; ideas come to me, away from the computer.

But that is really not what I was planning to write about in this post this time. Or maybe it is all related.

What I did want to write more about is those crossroads, my time in Maine and what I am reading at the moment. During our walks, I tried to explain to my daughter that one of the things I would love to do is become a certified forest bathing therapist. I explained to her what it was and what therapists do. You are supposed to take an expensive course to be able to call yourself a therapist, and I am sure you are considered a charlatan if you sell yourself as a therapist without the official certification, or worse, you can get sued by some forest bathing association.

That somehow gets me to the book I am reading and the quote that struck me and was the prompt for this post: “The problem with not knowing what you want is that you want everything.” I found this in a book written by Scott Stillman entitled “Nature’s Silent Message.” Darn it, you may want to put “to do” behind the words “want” and you have me, or as my mother always accused me to know a little about a lot (too many things) and be “a master of nothing.” I have been told that I am a darn decent teacher and hopefully I try to research the subjects I teach enough that I am credible as well. I study a lot of bonsai videos, but I still consider myself a dilettante. The writing I am doing here for this blog never really took off; probably because I am all over the place and not focused enough. I have 200 to 300 steady readers; I am definitely not an influencer, and neither is my Instagram site. But then, do I want to be that, or just comfortable with a few steady readers?

I realize that the critique of Stillman’s book is that it meanders and is all over the place, and so is my blog, I am afraid. But hopefully is has a common thread or in the end it comes back where I started. I just wonder if I need to focus, just on my bonsai; or on my teaching; on my environmental stance and opinions; on my biological and ecological background; on nature or forest bathing; on (god forbid) my political views; empathy; on sailing ( which I have had no time for the past two years); on my love for wine and microbrews; food and cooking; on reading; or just on (my) life and musing on what is going on around me. If you look at my subject list it is exhaustive. Crazy!

I would love to hear from you all what you think, what you prefer to read. Because I know that if I do not know what to write about (or what you all want me to write about) I will want to write about everything, to paraphrase Mr. Stillman. The story of my multifarious life.

Although I rarely post a selfie in my blog, here it is.  A happy Maine picture, waiting for lunch.

Crossroads (9/14/2021)

I have been somewhat at a crossroads in my life and on the other hand at peace with being there. Looking back at these past few weeks, it has been an interesting time, as it probably is for many of you or eventually will become for many of you. Being part of the so called “sandwich generation.” I am not sure which generation the top half of the bread is a which is the bottom, but although one, the parent part, has been reduced to only one, it has become progressively heavier or thicker. The kid, we only have one daughter, part of that sandwich is progressively getting thinner or lighter. But she has not gone away all together, in particular since she decided that she is going to get married early next fall and she wants to do it here in Virginia while she lives in Maine. So, you get the message, it looks like we will need to do a lot of leg work. We have absolutely no problem with the marriage itself, we just hoped she would elope (not really, that is just me joking).

In the middle of August, we moved my father-in-law from his spacious condo to an apartment in an independent living facility. Since he is 94, hard of hearing, technically blind in one eye, and has difficulty walking, the task fell on us to downsize him. He is still very much with it, thank goodness. But it was a lot of work going through his home and figuring what to take and what would go to our home or what we would have to take to Good Will. I think my back has finally recuperated somewhat. But our home is still one big tripping hazard. We look like hoarders! But a lot of his stuff is much better quality than ours which we accumulated in our student days of the late 1980s. Yes, we bought some new later with our limited budget.

However, it is not over. During the past year and a half of COVID, I did most of the shopping for my father-in-law. We were hoping that this would be a thing of the past with his move. Before he lived 10 minutes away, which has now become a 25-minute drive (each way). But the orders are still pouring in: peanut butter cup ice cream, lactose free milk, Post grape nuts, just to name a few of the essentials. Today I ordered a chair for his shower. His dry-cleaning lady misses him and asks my whether he is eating enough at his new place.

There are good things too. He gave us (me) his car, which is 9 years younger than mine and the same make and model. My car has 313,000 miles on the odometer, his had 31,000. I am paying is forward, I think, and I’ll be driving my car up to Maine this weekend to give it to our daughter and her fiancé, in the hope it holds up and they can use it as a second car. But Hondas should be able to do it for a while, I hope. (Postscript … I am editing this post while sitting in Maine. The car made it, and everything is fine).

Typical Jersey turnpike breakfast for champions like me.  

So yes, watching people getting older, talking about a daughter getting married, and approaching 70 in a few years (I am 68 right now), makes you wonder when it will be my time. These are the crossroads I was talking about. Should I retire or not retire, that is the question. Reading an article in the newspaper this week that Jill Biden who is 70 returned to the classroom to teach was somewhat interesting if not encouraging. Hey, I can do that too! I had a physical just before Labor Day, and while the words physical exam is somewhat disappointing, I came through it with flying colors. It was just a set of blood test which showed I was more-or-less healthy. It does make you feel good, and it was another piece in the puzzle in making that decision on retirement. Maybe I can try to break Jill Biden’s record.

There you have it. These are some of the things messing with my head and with my life. My crossroads right now. Not necessarily bad. This is why I am at peace with what is to come in my life; maybe more than ever.