Talking Heads ~ Expectations for retirement living with author Bruce Frankel

[JoanK]

Talking Heads #10
A  forum for opinions on anything in print: magazines, newspaper articles, online: bring your ideas and let's discuss.

"Choices – For the Rest of Your Life?"

We are fortunate to have Bruce Frankel as our guest  in this month's Talking Heads discussion.  Bruce is  the author of  "What Should I Do With the Rest of My Life?" in which he presents us with more than a dozen profiles of individuals he calls "ordinary people who embraced new possibilities late in life - extraordinary late bloomers who have overthrown the usual expectations of age." Profiled in the book is one of SeniorLearn's  own Discussion Leaders,  Robby Iadeluca, a practicing clinical psychologist, who still conducts a full schedule of therapy sessions, five days a week at the age of 90! A Review of  Bruce's book; Amazon link Our questions for Bruce as we consider these profiles: - Are these ordinary people like you and me...or do they possess extraordinary talent, wealth or physical fitness? - What inspiration can we take from his research today?

Thanks for joining us, Bruce!  We're looking forward to hearing your words of acquired wisdom!

*******************************************************************************

On the other side of the issue, ..."Gerontologists tend to think of successful aging as taking advantage of what potential there is, staying as socially and intellectually engaged as possible. Our culture tends to measure it more in terms of how active people are."

"Part of the pressure on older people to be successful and give back and volunteer and be active and play tennis is that we are a culture of doing. We don't really know how to be. That's something that late life gives us, is time to be. But that's stigmatized." "Turn 70.Act Your Grandchild’s Age"  Kate Zernike, NY Times
 
1. Are goals and expectations necessary for our “second life?”
2. What is ageism?  Outside of public policy decisions (i.e. Social Security, medicare, etc.) should age be a consideration?
3.  Whose Second Lives do you celebrate?
4. Do you or did you look forward to life after 65?
5. Did you have any specials plans.

 Your opinion?  Let's discuss!

Check out Bruce's Website and Blog!

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"A new language is learned faster by hearing it than by reading it".

I suspect that depends on what you plan to do with it. If you want to read books in the original language, as in Latin, I'd think you would need to learn by reading.

[ginny]

How much time each week do you think learning Latin -- or any language -- requires?

That's a good question, Bruce. I'm hearing from a lot of students what Pedln says here:

As Andy said,  we all learn at different rates.  I can't speak for other languages, but for me, Latin has to be a daily thing.

 


This is what I keep hearing!   This year we're moving to a three day class week, but that's what I keep hearing. I hope we can use the alternate days also for Latin without having to be in the class, it's scary really, why mess with success?

I think how much each day  varies for each student depending on how they learn and how much Latin (if any) they had in the past, and how captivated they are by it.  Many of our students hold full time jobs.  Latin is a discipline, and so to excel in it you have to discipline yourself, but it's worth it.

New approaches include immersion texts which use Latin words essentially in English constructions and constructs, using deliberate derivatives to make students think they are "reading Latin" when they are reading something else entirely, but they are cute and fun. There used to be conversational approaches and people who taught  the class only in Latin, no end of affectation,  while the real Latin authors go unread in their dazzling complexity.  The problem is you have to kiss a lot of frogs in Latin normally before you meet the prince:  the real authors, like Cicero for instance.  Latin underwent a lot of change in its long long history, so it depends on which period you are reading, too.

Frybabe, Rosetta Stone seems to come up all the time. I can't imagine why, in Latin,  unless people just like to hear the text read, we can and should do that. When we were on SeniorNet we were hampered by the size of the server, here we are unlimited,  but perhaps you have put your finger on it: Church or Ecclesiastical Latin perhaps would be useful to hear and to practice pronouncing. I understand that you repeat to the computer and it corrects your pronunciation. Does it do the same for grammar? Compound complex sentences in composition?

 I've been tempted to get the thing just to find out and in fact I think they did offer it to us here, free if I recall, but what's the point? Once you know how the words sound from the Golden Age of Roman Literature (which is our focus and that of most Latin courses) you know it.  

Based on the various comments here and there about the audio element, however, it seems we need to do more with the audio element, so  I am planning to do a lot more audio this time  and am grateful to Laura  Gibbs (Aesopica) for her assistance audio file  programs, but primarily the Latin of Caesar is not an oral language, unless you know anybody 2000 years old, it's more like hieroglyphics. You are unlikely  to meet anybody with whom you can converse (other than the societies who meet and converse, you can see a couple of examples on the internet...er...ok... yeah...).  and no native Latin speakers, so the idea,  as Eloise says,  of how one learns a modern  language best  works for languages now spoken.


That idea   is somewhat  lost with the idea of trying to communicate in 21th century idioms in  a 2000 year old language which has its own beauty and idiomatic expression. The Latin of Golden Age, for instance, is much richer in nuance than anything we have now. We have nothing that equals the ancients.

 This is another way it's a discipline: it will not yield its treasures without effort and work. There ARE no short cuts, unfortunately.

It's worth it.

[Frybabe]

Thanks for the input, Ginny.

[ginny]

 Sorry,  hope that wasn't too strong?

Whatever students find useful is what we should do, to the best of our capacity. Can you tell the Rosetta Stone commercials irritate me? They may be fine for modern languages, but they do include Latin. As you say, which Latin do they include?  If it's ancient Latin the mind boggles with:

"There’s no translation or memorization in the Rosetta Stone experience,"


Oh really?

" so you’ll learn naturally and build continuously on what you’ve learned."


How, if you don't remember what you learned yesterday? Or will you magically "remember"  this approach without "memorizing?"

" Our interactive program will keep you engaged and motivated throughout your language-learning journey. You’ll listen to the voices of native speakers to refine your pronunciation and speak confidently in real conversations. And since our program is easy to use, you can focus on learning-and have fun along the way."

It would be worth it to me to hear the 2000 year old native speakers speak the language as it sounded then.  JoanK is right.

I don't see the claims on this ad about the no boring  drills, conjugations, maybe they've removed that nonsense. If it sounds too good to be true it probably is. We've all done the Travel Learn Italian  French (this is why I should not type in a thunderstorm!)  hahhaa   in 7 days  and that's fine until you want to read Les Miserables, then you find, doggone it, you can't. Maybe Set #2 includes the boring conjugations, verb forms, and drills. hahaha


"Build a foundation of fundamental Spanish vocabulary and essential language structure"

Ok you're going to build a foundation but you won't remember any of the words and language structure because you won't be memorizing. Anything. Including your address or phone number. But you'll build a foundation.

Review: "Wow, seriously."
"I am amazed at how much easier it is compared to memorizing verbs, nouns and conjugation charts was in high school"

Yeah. So much easier, but you'll learn them if you go far enough to read real literature, you just aren't there yet.   Become a brain surgeon in a week, no memorization, just  listen and learn.

Sorry, rant over. Really over  

[Frybabe]

You’ll listen to the voices of native speakers to refine your pronunciation and speak confidently in real conversations. And since our program is easy to use, you can focus on learning-and have fun along the way."

It would be worth it to me to hear the 2000 year old native speakers speak the language as it sounded then.

You crack me up, Ginny. LMAO       

Monday I should be able to register for my fall classes, IF the classes are not full. The program they got me in on gets me free classes, I pay for the books, etc., BUT I can only register five days before classes begin. I'm going to try registering online first thing, but I still must go get my student ID, parking pass and books. After that is all settled I will be able to tell if I will have time to take your Latin class this fall. My adviser wants me to take three classes if I can get them.

I guess we ought to get back to Bruce and the book.

[ginny]

Frybabe, you ARE Bruce's book. Look at you!! Just look. How long did you work at your previous employment, you got laid off in the recession, and LOOK at you, three classes, a grant, you go, girl!  To what  career,  what studies is your new frontier taking you now?  You mentioned it somewhere, but just the idea  is so exciting to me.   You and the rest of the people here ARE living the dream and it's very exciting to even be around your fabulous selves. You'll need to change your login name to reflect your new dazzling status.

I particularly love the light our members here on SeniorLearn  give off without even knowing it. I love, even if I can't myself equal it, basking in it. It just makes you feel better.

And you're right, just this morning I was reading A Pie Maker's Place. I am so struck by Loretta's philosophy of life, it just blew me away in its humility and beauty.

At 76 in 2009 she is still getting up at 6 am to "cook, bake, and greet her loyal customers." She runs a diner, can you imagine how tiring that must be?  At 76?  "After eight years, the diner's novelty had worn off a bit.....But when she was made an offer, the year before, she decided to give herself an extra day off instead of sell."

So when things began to get tough, she adapted, just like she did her entire life, she's surfing the hard waves of life, what a story she has.

"But then I go to the diner and we..." The reason she believes people come from twenty miles away  is that people see in the diner "something dependable. 'I think, too, people want to be spoiled a little, they want to feel like someone cares.'"

"My father used to say you reap what you sow. I think of that each week when I go to the bank to make a deposit. I take out twenty dollars to give to someone who really needs it. At my age, what difference does it make, as long as I have enough money to eat? I don't want to travel. I don't need to shop. I'm very content with what I'm doing every day. I enjoy people saying to me 'It was a good meal."

There's something really noble about this person's quiet dignity and humility mixed as it is with perseverance....something really fine.

She says  that people come come because "they feel comfortable here, for the fellowship. I guess that's what I'm here for."  

Something about her story brought tears of admiration  to my eyes. I am so glad she is also in the book.  Here is a woman so humble, working incredible hours at 76... in a new career she started. I mean I can't cook in the first place, can you even IMAGINE what her days must be like? She seems to have no lofty aspirations yet she is probably one of the loftiest people I've read about, I can't say how impressed with this woman I am. Widowed at 67, lost her daughter  in 2003,  burned out by a fire:  look at her life!

She's one of the probably thousands of unsung American heroes we meet every day and never notice. I am so glad for this book.

What made you decide to add her, Bruce? Was there anybody you reluctantly had to leave out of the book?

[Frybabe]

Accounting Certificate, Ginny. I am going back to my roots. In high school I took the Business/Bookkeeping courses. My first jobs were mostly accounting. Back then you could get a job in business without having to go to college. My first real job was at a TV/Radio station where I was responsible for ALL of the Accounts Payable and the radio station Accounts Receivable. I was also the one they wanted typing (remember typewriters with carbons?) the tax forms because I was good at getting everything lined up properly. Nowadays, it seems people want to see a degree of some sort for almost everything.

The course includes a Tax Accounting class, and I can sign up for Technical and Report writing. The writing course is one I always wanted to take but couldn't fit it into my schedule when I when to college in the late 80s. It's amazing how many people are trying to steer me to Business Writing because the T&R class is mostly for engineers. I've spent years creating and typing letters, memos, etc.  The T&R class will teach me, among other things, how to write proposals. I've typed proposals before, but they were already templated and all I had to do was adjust and drop in numbers for individual clients. I am looking forward to these two classes especially.

[ANNIE]

Frybabe, all my good thoughts are streaming to you.  Sounds like you really know what you are doing.  Don't forget to eat right and get plenty of rest.  

[brucefrankel]

Thank you, Ginny, I'm going to print your message out and tape it on the wall over my desk! I am deeply touched by it. I may need to hire your to market the book for me or say my prayers that you  write a review on Amazon.

There's something really noble about this person's quiet dignity and humility mixed as it is with perseverance....something really fine.

She says  that people come come because "they feel comfortable here, for the fellowship. I guess that's what I'm here for." 
Something about her story brought tears of admiration  to my eyes. I am so glad she is also in the book.  Here is a woman so humble, working incredible hours at 76... in a new career she started. I mean I can't cook in the first place, can you even IMAGINE what her days must be like? She seems to have no lofty aspirations yet she is probably one of the loftiest people I've read about, I can't say how impressed with this woman I am. Widowed at 67, lost her daughter  in 2003,  burned out by a fire:  look at her life! She's one of the probably thousands of unsung American heroes we meet every day and never notice.

Loretta was one of my earliest subjects. I had called the Small Business Administration in Washington, D.C. and spoke with a wonderful woman in the press office. I told her about the book I was hoping to write and that I was searching for candidates. I asked if there was some way to ask SBA offices around the country to send me suggestions of people to profile who fit my criteria -- over 60, no prior success, no huge financial advantage, finding success in business. And like that, my wish was granted. The SBA sent out word to all its press officers and among the responses came one from the Syracuse, NY office about Loretta.

There was something that appealed to me about her story, though the outline I received had few of the personal details included in the book. It may not even have had anything about the pies. But it appealed to my imagination. At first, I phoned Loretta and her grandson. She was lovely to speak with, but not extremely chatty and not, it seemed, a natural storyteller. If someone's life is going to be a chapter of a book, it helps if they're not too shy or too humble. But even with her reserve, even speaking with a stranger, the intrinsic qualities of her personality came through. I wasn't sure if her story would hold up, but I figured I would gamble and drive 8 hours north to DeKalb Junction.

 I left New York around 8 p.m. By about midnight, I was far upstate on, and my mother called me on my cell from Florida to keep me company on the drive. I don't remember what we talked about, just that she made me laugh and helped get me through a tough patch of driving. I arrived in DeKalb Junction not long before dawn.

My experience talking to Loretta in the diner and in her farmhouse across the road is pretty much all there. I clearly fell in love with her. I'm not a religious person, but when Loretta spoke of her faith it felt like the real deal. It wasn't put on. It wasn't abstract. It wasn't about religion for religion's sake. It was part of the quality of her life, a life that shined with just that nobility you mentioned, Ginny. When she spoke about her life growing up in DeKalb, of her married life with Paul, her farmer husband, of their one adventure to Niagara Falls on their honeymoon, or the pleasure she took joining him in the field during haying, I was transported by the beauty and connection she felt to her own life. There was no complaint in her. Her losses were full and felt. She did not hide or gloss over the pain of her son's death. The losses were woven into the fabric of her life in a way that made them somehow illuminating. Her ambition, as she distilled it, to provide good food and good fellowship was genuine.

In the diner, I would have had to be as dumb as a brick to miss how others regarded her. Her customers seemed to come to attention in her presence. I don't mean like soldiers. I mean that they seemed to light up a little more brightly, too. It was not the pies, I realized. The pies are an excuse for people to come to the diner. It reminded me of places I had seen in my childhood in Florida, places that no longer exist, places that were lost to brightness and speed and change. Loretta didn't represent a way that had been lost; she is it. Her goodness was palpable. The question, however, remained, Is there enough of a story?

My first draft was not promising. Nothing came to life. The details were there, but not the feeling. I considered cutting Loretta from the book. But first I gave the chapter to an editor to read for me. She agreed with me that I had not succeeded, but she encouraged me to take another crack at it, to put more place and more pie in it. Those were her marching orders, and I am ever grateful. It was after that I asked Loretta to send me -- over her protests -- pieces of pie in containers I FedExed to her. And it was after that, that I really worked on the place -- thought about Loretta in her kitchen in the morning, about the road that cuts through DeKalb, and about the community to which she is so important. I knew that Loretta had the qualities of truth and goodness and determination that I hoped would define "success" in my book. I just hoped that my writing would not get in its way. I had never wanted to write a prescriptive book. I wanted to write a book in which people could be seen and felt and from whom each reader could have her own connection, discover his own lesson. Perhaps, because what she did or does is so ordinary, Loretta was the most perfect subject of all. I think people respond so deeply to her because she is a beacon of authentic values, the stuff those of us of a certain age remember people once aspired to.

Anyone I left out?

Well, yes. I see and hear about people all the time now that I think, "Oh, why didn't I know about her!" But there was a gentleman whose story I wanted to tell, an amazing story about light that his achieved from darkness. But he decided that he did not want to bear his story publicly afterall.

And there was a chapter that I wrote, and which still sits in my computer, about the poet Samuel Menashe, who lives in a 5th-floor walk-up flat in Greenwich Village where he moved when he was thirty-one years old. Its original clawfoot tub in the kitchen. After years of being rejected by the poetry establishment, he received the  Poetry Foundation's Neglected Masters Award, intended to draw fresh attention to a signficant American poet whose work deserves a wider readership. I liked the piece, but for space and diversity my editor and I made the decision to cut Menashe. It wasn't easy. But the truth was that his story did not quite fit the book.

His poems are compact. Here are three:

"The Niche"

The niche narrows
Hones one thin
Until his bones
Disclose him

----

AT A STANDSTILL

That statue, that cast
Of my solitude
Has found its niche
In this kitchen
Where I do not eat
Where the bathtub stands
Upon cat feet--
I did not advance
I cannot retreat

-----

White hair does not weigh

more than the black
which it displaces--
Upon any fine day
I jump these traces

[ANNIE]

Your posts are so great to read that you should put them all together and you would have another book. I love your indecision over Loretta.  And, I too, loved her response to her earlier life when she told of joining her husband in the fields and enjoying it.  I would bet we have an army of farm wives around the world who have felt the same way.   

We haven't said much about the lady runner who really challenged herself.  She did have much support from her family but she was so strong and focused on her running life.  If only we could all be that much of a straight arrow in our lives.  In whatever we do.  I must return to her story to see if she was always a runner.  I can't remember.  Back tomorrow!

[Steph]

Oh me, yes I talk up seniorlearn everywhere.. The Friday groups,, the Friends of the Library and my widows group.. I love senior learn and I know others will .. Big drawback seems to be the computer . Amazing how many people I meet, who dont do anything but email.. Sigh.

[ANNIE]

Steph,
I think that those of us who joined this group and many others like it, just aren't ready to sit down daily and watch TV.  Plus, we are so thrilled with our computers and what great things are revealed to us on the net.  I love the speed with which I can get info.
Maybe, that's what I should have said about myself after I took flying lessons.

That was the year when we sold a house we had raised our kids in and moved out of state. Having had a computer in the house since 1977, I was not afraid of seeing what I could do on it.  Not much, but from reading all the magazines that the men had laying around, I soon knew how to speak "computerese".  I became their gofer and had to speak as tho' I knew more than I really did.  So, I learned to speak the language without really knowing much.  I would have made a great saleswoman at that time.
 
Anyway, it took me almost ten years and the development of Apple's Lisa which my son owned, for me to see the beauty of it all.  It could cut and paste!! It could cut and copy what it cut to a different place!  Amazing!

We moved to California from Georgia where we bought an all-in-one Apple Macintosh Plus and I thought I had hit the jackpot!  I did lots of work for my husband while he was inventing a new way to refuel airplanes aloft and I learned much from that but my biggest fun was writing our first Christmas and printing it in color.  I was agog!!  I made up a poem using the poem meter of "Twas the Night Before Christmas".  I continued to do these Christmas on that little box and joined Compuserve which gave me a little looksee into the internet. We weren't on the net yet but it was coming alive.  I even did some genealogy on Compuserve and also trip planning using the connection at work(travel agency) to get up the airline schedules.  We several applications on their own floppy disks including MacWrite and MacPaint.
 
Here's a link to my old Macintosh Plus:  http://www.landsnail.com/apple/local/design/macplus.html

How far we have come!!  Now we have too many computers in our house even a new iPod for me but I have to say that we still use them.  And I am still agog!
  
At one time, I taught people at the senior center how to use their new computers, even showed them how to get to Seniornet but I don't think any of them realized the power they had at their fingertips.

[ALF43]

Shortly before I retired from nursing, I had worked at Tampa Genl. hospital where I was first introduced to a "NURSING computer.  I was floored with the possibilities of what this machine could do and how it could expedite valuable nursing information for the nursing staff and for the docs.  I was hooked after that- had never used a computer in my life and still marvelled at the typewriter that i used at home all of the time. with that-- I bought a big-arsed lap top (1990) and discovered a whole new world.  Unfortunately I had to go back to nursing for another 15 years, but strived to become quite proficient and interested in the technology and still love to learn new things about the computer.  I don't come close to knowing a great deal but I love to learn.
At this point every nursing station has computer access and I marvel at this wonder.

[JoanK]

"White hair does not weigh

more than the black
which it displaces--
Upon any fine day
I jump these traces"

Oh, yes!

[pedln]

Amazing how many people I meet, who dont do anything but email.. Sigh.
Steph

How true, or maybe play games.  And many don’t like to register for anything, free or not.  Which is understandable, sort of.  I guess our mission is to just keep plugging away, letting folks know what SeniorLearn has to offer.

Ann, my 81-year-old brother goes back before 1977 with his first computer – if you can call it that.  An oblong piece with 8 toggle switches – for bits and bites, I guess.  You could say that we’ve come a long way, baby.  I bought my first one in 1982, before we even had one in the school library or in the school, deducted part of the cost on my taxes and got audited by the IRS office in St. Louis. I sent that auditor reams of stuff showing library work, even running overdue lists at home, overnight. It all worked, they allowed it, but then they started clamping down after that.

Bruce, I’m glad you told us how you found and chose some of the people for your book.  I can’t imagine the agonizing decisions you had to make about who to keep and who to cut, or all the extra things you did, like having Loretta send  you the pies, to make sure that you did the right for everyone concerned.  Amazing.

Frybabe, I hope all the classes that you want to take will stay open until you get them.  Good luck.

[Steph]

First computer.. 1979.. a friendly idiot. YOu must load it when you turn it on.. I think called a TI.. not very efficient, but as a genealogist, I could see how great it would be.. and it is.

[ursamajor]

I still have my Osborne computer, which was the first portable computer available.  Ozzie weighs about the same as a sewing machine and is about the same size.  His companion was Daisy, a daisy-wheel printer.  Alas, Daisy passed away long ago.  The computer came with bundled software, including Dbase2.  The screen is abut the size of a filing card.  You put the work disk in one drive and the software disk in the other slot.  It was a wondrous machine, and taught me how to use Dbase, Word, Excel and several other forms of softwaRE.  I wonder if he has any antique value now.  

[ginny]

Wow, what great posts, what a great discussion!!

Stephanie, thank you for promoting us!!

Frybabe, Accounting!! I can't begin to do accounting, failed the only course I ever took. More power to you!! Never understood the Balance Sheet, does not make logical sense. There ARE people whose assets exceed their debits and there ARE people whose debits exceed their assets, but all must balance equally in the famous Balance Sheet. (is that what it's called?) HOW? A homeless man on the street will not have equal assets and debits. It's not LOGICAL!!

Bruce! I'm honored, my goodness,  and I think your last post should be framed, itself. How beautifully and lyrically you write.

Wow III:

I did not advance
I cannot retreat


Boy o boy o boy. Truth in a nutshell. Absolutely love it. Thank you for putting his poetry here. I agree with Pedln, thank you for that fascinating explanation on how  you chose and had to eliminate people from the book.

I thought of you and Loretta on Saturday night, flipping the cable channels, trying to find ONE thing of interest in the hundreds of offerings. Reality shows. Bridezillas, The Kardashians. I lingered on the promo of the Kardashians, truly revolting and sad, is this what America has become?

I thought (The Pie Maker being fresh in my mind) how nice it would be instead of seeing people punch thru walls in a drunken stupor and in tears etc., if we could actually see The Pie Maker for one episode. Something positive, real, and uplifting for a change.

The Food Network features real people doing real things,  Charles Kuralt used to do it,  is there any hope that someday perhaps we can see the What Should I Do With the Rest of My Life people on our television? Any nibbles from producers, etc?

[Frybabe]

All registered. Got the classes I wanted. I guess that means I will have to pass on Latin again this year.

[JoanK]

My first contact with computers was in 1955. I was one of the early computer programmers. The first program I wrote was in Binary (all zero's and ones) machine language. The computer was so big and heavy, it needed a special room and extra-strong flooring. My program took an hour to produce 100 numbers of data, and the output was on punched paper tape, yards of it, that fell into a huge bin. you had to role it up to put it on another machine that read it. If you grabbed the wrong end, you wound up with a huge paper tape snarl, that would take hours to untangle.

[brucefrankel]

Hi, all.

Well, it was like wearing a wet blanket in a sauna today. Yeesh!

Thank you all for your generous remarks.

I had fun, after I read your posts, thinking back on my own computer life. In college, I nearly flunked statistics because I just could not figure out what I was supposed to do with one of those binary systems, all 1 and 0s. It still makes me anxious to think about it.

I remember when we, as reporters, began to use increasingly sophisticated word processing systems. When I first started at the newspaper, it was all Selectric typewriters -- the Cadillac of all electric typewriters. Or the Rolls Royce. Harry Bernstein still writes on one. When I went out on my own as a freelancer, I got my first "portable" computer in 1983. It was like metal suitcase, barely portable, and only held a couple of pages in memory. Even the floppies -- real floppies -- didn't hold much. And wow, I remember when I had my first laptop for reporting from the courts when I was covering the Gen. Westmoreland vs CBS libel trial, and the Ariel Sharon vs Time Inc libel trial, and the Leona Helmsley tax fraud trial. The modem was about the size of a shoe, and you had to stick the whole phone in it to send. But you could only send a file of less than 2 pages. That was around 1985.

Sadly, my son recently borrowed my MacBook and his friend accidentally spilled water on it and killed it!!

PedIn, It never fails, though, when you go the extra step in reporting -- like asking Loretta to send the pies-- it pays off in spades.
And Ginny, I only wish that there was interest in a What Should I Do With The Rest Of My Life? TV show ala Charles Kuralt. I did love his work!
And Charles Osborne. Radio poets.

I share your frustration, of course, with what's on television. I gave up watching TV almost entirely many years ago. I only watch the Yankees or the Knicks, but almost nothing else. I know there's much that's good. But I don't have the patience to find it, when I know there is so much I know I want to read. I do wish I had the time -- and a working DVD player -- to watch movies from time to time. I miss doing that.

Today, I was interviewed for a radio show called The Writer's Voice by Francesca Rhiannon. She did a great job and knew the book thoroughly. When we got around to talking about Thomas Dwyer, she told me that her mother had danced professionally into her 80s, when she broke her hip. Then she took up painting. When I came home I looked her mother up online: Frances Alenikoff. She was quite well known and a very big part of experimental dance in America. And her art, which she is still making, at 93, is quite interesting and accomplished. I will call and speak with Frances over the next couple of weeks and do a blog post on her for my website.

On Sunday, I posted a little recognition of Abbey Lincoln, who died Saturday, at the age of 80. There was a woman who knew how to reinvent herself with passion and purpose. You may remember her from For Love of Ivy, with Sidney Poitier. I was rushing, so didn't write much, but I loved the way she sang. When I was listening to her work yesterday, I heard a song I had never heard before: What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life?   Take a listen:

 http://new.music.yahoo.com/abbey-lincoln/tracks/what-are-you-doing-the-rest-of-your-life--217497534

'Night. Bruce

[Steph]

Oh, a song I love.. How neat. I love the 1955 computer history. I remember the punch cards that came with your telephone bill.. With stern instructions on not folding, punching, etc. And the comics that made fun of said cards.. The beginnings of the computer world were interesting. I took several courses in binary and played with it, but never got good..

[ANNIE]

JoanK,
1955--iWow!!!  Was that Eniac or Univac??  They are both in the Smithsonian!  And I thought our first desktop was hard to use.  You had to write your own programs which I did not do but my husband and the boys really had a blast with it.  They wrote several games, a recipe program for me, and their own form of Excel and they used it to contact their friends on those contact boards?? Can't remember what they were called.  
As I said, I didn't have my own desktop until the MacPlus came out but I just found a picture of the first Apple desktop that Steven Jobs and Steve Wosniak built in their garage.  

Here 'tis:  http://www.landsnail.com/apple/local/design/apple1.html

Looking at that wooden case made me laugh. Its shaped like this that I have a footstool under my desk for staying in the proper position while I compute.  Ergonomically correct!!  That's what I am!

And,  I don't remember some of the old names except TI which stands for Texas Instruments.

[pedln]

Bruce, that’s great about your being interviewed for  The Writer’s Voice.  That’s an interesting website.  Do you have a broadcast date yet?

We really need a link to your website and blog up in the heading – so we can meet all the other people and things you write about.   I tried to put it there, but don’t understand the word “table” and was afraid I’d do something to mess up the whole thing.  So, JoanP, Ginny – here it is

Bruce’s website and blog.

Bruce, do you have a schedule for your blog, or do you write there just when something especially motivates you, such as the death of Abby Lincoln?

Steph, binary?  I’m impressed.  I remember my 5th grader coming home from school and telling me about it, and I got the yes and no part, but could never translate Arabic numerals into binary.

Thinking about Margie Stoll – if she can do all she does, then I can surely swim a few laps.  So, off to the pool.

[ANNIE]

I remember learning about binary but I took a class from at the local community college that they offered free for parents whose children were learning about the binary system and I could never figure it out either.

Oh, Bruce, you have your own blog site? Will it tell us of your other talents and list other books?  Is this your first "first person non-fiction"?  I will go look!

I love the story of Abbey Lincoln who made many changes in her life, clear up to  Saturday or Sunday, whe she died at the age of 80.

[mabel1015j]

Bruce, I think you are in good company, didn't everybody "nearly flunked statistics"? Fortunately, in my graduate studies we had a professor who recognized that most of us were never going to be doing heavy-duty research and took pity on us, so i got a "B" as a graduate student and haven't used one iota of what was being taught in that class since then.

My first experience w/ computers was being friends in the mid-60's w/ people who were using them in banking, w/ punch-cards, etc.  My hands on experience came w/ an Apple IIE in the mid-80's, our first in-home computer. My husband was a v.p. at a college and had the expert advice of the computer people on campus. They were so right........ When i started using computers on the job in the 80's w/ Dept of Army, they were using and training us in pc's. Ohhhhh what a complicated mess compared to the Apple. Apple used, what seemed to me, to be rational, simple language for the actions of use, while IBM apparently wanted to make there products exclusive/status bearing - you're something special if you know how to use our programs - while Apple was appealing to the majority.

I was pleased that a young - 40-something- cousin made note on her facebook about Abby Lincoln's passing. Many of that generation are listening to the standard bearers of the 20th century. I have a grand-nephew who has a jazz ensemble who listen to and play the "standards" of jazz: Monk, Coltrane, Brubeck, Peterson, etc. Isn't that nice to know? And isn't it nice that we have their recordings to continue to listen to for the rest of our lives? Music has become more and more important to me in the last 2 decades. I find it a stress reliever and a joy. ................... jean

[ANNIE]

Well, Jean, I am glad that you like the Apple products.  User friendly is what they are.

 And like many of us, you appreciate the older jazz and its spectaculary talented musicians.  Monk, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gilliespie had his moments,too.
 
And I too, have some younger than springtime grans who love the oldies and have them playing in their cars and there technically correct stereos.  Its a treat to talk about some their favorites, like Ella, Louis Armstrong,  Dizzy, Mel Torme, Perle Bailey.  I have some great CD's of Ella, Mel Torme with Earl Garner from Concord Studios, and of course, Marion Mc Partland. This kind of music keeps us sane in the sad world of junk that is available at this time.

Have you listened to Diana Krall and Jane Monheit??? They are very good and quite young!

[mabel1015j]

Ohhhh, Erroll Garner, YES! Isn't his music lovely?

And yes, i am a great fan of Diana Krall and Jane Monheit, and the net makes it so easy to hear their music, i'm really falling in love w/ the internet, it's finally doing all those things that we were promised in the 90's...........i'll never have enough time to enjoy all of it's goodness, it already steals my time from other things i should be doing..........jean

[JoanK]

BRUCE: what a lovely song.

JEAN: it was UNIVAC. I'm amazed it's in the Smithsonian.

I'm so glad that the old jazz is being kept alive. PBS is now rerunning a program about Miles Davis. Sad to think of the many great musicians in the old days that never got recorded and so are lost to us.

I'm surprised that the children are learning binary. It has no practical use, but I guess it stretches the mathematical way of thinking.

[ANNIE]

JoanK,
That was me asking about whether your 1955 computer was Eniac or Univac.  Its in the old Smithsonian original building and was there when we visited in 1978. 
Thanks for telling us about the PBS special on Miles Davis.  I will look and see if our station is showing it.
Also, I didn't know about Diana Krall and Jane Monheit being on the net.  I'll be looking for them.

When the college offered the "new math" description to all the parents, many of us jumped to see what it  would consist of and there, the Head of the Math Dept, a Dominican nun, was trying to explain something to us and   we had no idea what she was talking about.  But she kept repeating it was the future of math.  This was in the early 60's.

[brucefrankel]

About my blog. I have tried to keep to a schedule, but not well. My hope is always to post on Tuesday and Thursday, but lately it's been one or the other. Or catching up with Thursday over the weekend. The blog is a melange -- stories about people from the book or others how accomplish or have accomplished much in later life; poetry; neuroscience and aging, and dance and the brain. I would like to write more essayistically, but time really hasn't permitted me to do that. I've mostly fallen back on reporting, more or less. Another goal for the blog is to do more original interviews on it. Alas, while on deadline on the book I'm ghosting, I've been lucky to find the time to do anything.

Now, I'm off tomorrow to take my mother to the hospital for a battery replacement in her pacemaker. We don't expect any problems. She's tough stuff.

I happened to remember the name of my first portable computer. It was called Kaypro.

Take a look at this streamlined baby: http://oldcomputers.net/kayproii.html

And speaking of 1955, here's a poem I wrote about my mother and her relationship with her vacuum cleaner, circa 1955:

VACUUM (1955)


You were the vehicle of her obsession
to rid our house of dirt,
if not disease,

a gray, urn-shaped, chrome-grilled fish,
a stove-enamel bottom feeder
which inhaled us clean.

I come to you, icon, dust grave,
employed by love until you seemed
almost a lover,

angel of hygiene reposing on rounded rail sleds,
Lurelle Guild’s Model XXX
Electrolux,

whose name, richer than Royal, Kirby or Hoover
(though Eureka had its claim),
was scripted

in post-war aluminum over nail-polish red,
implying something feverish,
sexual.

She slid you out— electric, streamlined,
bullet shaped— and unfurled
your cloth hose,

placed it in the slant nose hole
until clips clicked on curled
metal lips.

O ardent machine
that burned to suction rugs
through sculpted snout!

Your motor grew hot and ionized the air while she wielded the long wand,
probing every crease and crevice,
every spot.

Still I smell the air after you had stopped, after the loud hum
cut out and left our limbs tingling
in aftershock.

Smiling, satisfied, she emptied the small sac.
Nothing rare: green cat’s eye,
nugget of snot,

black bobby pin that held her hair in a tight brown bun,
but mostly cotton-candy ash of dead
compacted cells,

sloughed-off selves which day after day confettied
down for your immaculate bride,
vacuuming away.

---

Enjoy! - Bruce

[brucefrankel]

By the way, I love Diana Kroll, too.

But also, there is a lot of contemporary music that I like, when I hear it. I don't listen a lot, but -- ahem -- I love my son Alex's music. His band is called Holy Ghost!

Here's a video of Holy Ghosts! recently released "I See, I Hear": 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aJcyde1N9Y

(I suggest letting it load up a little and dragging the start point back. It take a little time to buffer. That's Alex in the thin striped shirt singing & playing guitar, keyboard, and some riffs on drums; that's nick on drums; that's the very talented  Caroline Polachek doing a guest spot.)

[brucefrankel]

I meant "I Know. I Hear."

[Steph]

I agree that I love the older jazz. My grand is into head bangers ,, but she is only 14.. All her bands have horrible off the wall names,,
I did a little programming on my second computer. It was a portable(ho ho ho) Compaq.. Little green screen and you had to be strong to carry it. I used the old Read..Writer... File.... Report programs to create my genealogy program and data base. I was sick when I had to change over. I loved the freedom of my programming.. Now I use a simply genealogy program for its speed in tucking data here and there, but am not fond of it.
The TI was more of a novelty than anything.. It hiccuped,, lost data and generally was experimental, but I just knew that all was coming and now it is here ..

[ANNIE]

Not my cup of tea, Bruce, but if they are successful who am I to knock that music?? Its just not for me.  I do see their musical abilities though and am reminded that one of the musicals on Broadway is entitled, "The Million Dollar Quartet",  which is about a 1956 jam session of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash,  Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins at Sun Studios.  All music that we know from that age.  But the amazing part of this story is about the musicians who are on stage.   Although their history is varied, they have played all genres of music while here they are doing the music of the '50's and they sound great.  After an ad for another show on Broadway, take a listen to this musical and these talented young men:
 
http://www.broadway.com/shows/million-dollar-quartet/video/150761/spotlight-on-million-dollar-quartet/

Hope your wonderful mother got along with her pacemaker replacement yesterday.  My husband has to have that done in the next month or so.  Its always one thing or another in this long life but all seems to go along in good, if sometimes slow, rhythm.
  
I was rereading the beginning of the book about your mother, Bruce, and here is Virginia Marsh Bell, age 86, who having lived had a unbelievably active life with her ideas of how to give care being accepted in many countries around the world and bringing much to the education of caregivers and kindness and love to those who have dementia, fought her way through non Hodgkin's lymphoma at 85 while studying string theory in math and maintaining her three days a week at 6am in high impact aerobics.  What a strong lady!  Her mental and emotional abilities are just amazing.  Would that we all could look at the world as she does saying, "I don't mind getting old. I enjoy life to the fullest. What I most of all hate is the idea of missing the rest of this century."
Are her abilities in her genes??  And how was she nurtured in her early years??  Is this nature or nurture??  

[JoanK]

Bruce: I liked the Holy Ghost music (listened to some of their other songs on youtube, too). Are they recorded?

[brucefrankel]

AdoAnnie -- Of course, I can easily imagine that Holy Ghost! might not send everyone to the moon, though I'm delighted that you listened. Thank you for taking the time. And yes, "The Million Dollar Quartet" looks like a lot of fun.

Steph-  There's so much I would risk trying, but I can't wrap my head around the idea of trying programming. It says a lot about you that you took a shot at it.

JoanK -- To answer: Alex, my son, and Nick, the drummer, were part of another band that was signed to Capitol Records when they were still in high school. The band split up a few years later and Alex and Nick changed their style of music, worked as studio musicians, and began releasing a song here or there through their producers, DFA. They also do a lot of writing for other bands, and their songs have been very successful. In May, they releasd an EP - a four record album -- and began to perform live as Holy Ghost! for the first time. They opened for a big pop band, LCD Soundsystem no a national tour. Alex first night performing was before 4,000 people. So, it's been a steep learning curve. They are signed to two very big labels, Universal in Europe and the Far East, and their signing with a giant in the U.S., Canada and South America will hpe shortly. Their full album will be out early next year. They've been getting amazingly good press.

As for Virginia Marsh Bell: My first conversation with Virginia will be forever imprinted in my mind. And as I said in the introduction, her saying, "You've got to make the brain sweat" made a huge impression on me. But one of the things that struck me, and goes back to a point someone made earlier, is that Virginia grew up on a farm, too. She told me a wonderful story of standing by and watching her father dig post holes in his late 80s, and he was still urging and encouraging her. She was a math major as an undergraduate at Transylvania College/University (?), before she married. Her husband was a minister, and for the most part she lived the life of a minister's wife. But it did seem to me that there was something of the farm life that nurtured Virginia. My own theory -- which I didn't write  into the book -- is that the strong values of farm life of communal responsibility, of respect for life, of perserverance in the face of disappointment and failure, and that kind of self-reliance that Emerson famously wrote about was breathed in by these girls who grew up on farms. It is speculative, but after interview Virginia Marsh Bell and Loretta, in particular, I thought about how many disciplines are encountered growing up on a farm; and how much is lost in lives of total privilege, or a life where all one does is concentrate on school work. Virginia Marsh Bell is an amazing woman.

[Lucylibr]

I am reading the book and like it very much.  The stories are full of fascinating detail and most engaging.  I appreciate all that these people have done. My accomplishments in retirement have been modest. One thing I have learned is that once retired I was really the manager of my own life, and that is not always so easy.  I have had to make choices, say no to some things, and plan for the future. One reason I am so late signing into this discussion is that I have spent a lot of time this summer in the summer Latin reading group. I thought it would be a brief diversion, but it has turned out to be an everyday commitment, not just to translate but to review the grammar and attempt some exercises.

I must mention my friend Sally Gordon, who at the age of 101, is still working as a sergeant at arms for the Nebraska State Legislature. I went back to Lincoln for the celebration of her 100th, and it was great--a big reception at the state Capitol and a luncheon at the Cornhusker Hotel. Recently she received an award presented by Sen. Ben Nelson from Experience Works as America's Outstanding Oldest Worker for 2010. Sally was secretary to two different governors of Nebraska and retired in her 70's from the Social Security Administration. She volunteers at the Governor's Mansion as a hostess. She walks a lot, goes to the grocery store and brings home her groceries in a shopping cart, and lives alone in her own home. There is a chapter about Sally in Mary Pypher's book on aging, and there have been many magazine and newspaper articles.

[Eloise]

Bruce, I love the poem about a vacuum cleaner, it’s good to laugh and so true too. We shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously.

Many of my children had a musical experience in their teens and still enjoy listening to pop music mixed in with some classical pieces, where I enjoy some jazz I prefer classical, but last night I listened to South Pacific on PBS that was thoroughly delightful.

Anne, “Are her (Virginia Marsh Bell) abilities in her genes? …..Is this nature or nurture?”

To me only so much of the make up of the body is attributed to genes. Abilities can’t be one OR the other, it is both nature and nurture. I believe that the key to healthy aging is mental and physical balance and when one predominates the other suffers, but we never have enough time each day to do what we want to do. 

Sometimes we have to let loose and throw everything by the way side and be a little bad, otherwise wanting to have your cake and eat it too will drive you crazy.

At 84 I am still healthy, active and useful in society, but how long will that last? I don’t know and I don’t think about it.

[brucefrankel]

 Good morning. So, in this strangest of worlds, I am sitting in a hospital waiting room in South Florida, while my mother is in an operating room having her batteries changed. Before she went in, she promised to come out like the Energizer Bunny, advertising her new power source.

Lucy, Thank you for joining in and for your comment on the book. I was unaware that Sally Gordon had won the Outstanding Older Worker award. I  will definitely look up recent stories and perhaps contact her, to write a blog posting for my website. She sounds great. And I am hugely impressed wtih your commitment to learning Latin. I feel a little jealous of those of you who are pursuing Latin. I think that when I'm done writing the book that I'm working on, I'll have re-evaluate my schedule and see if I can figure out a way to work in the time commitment to do a Latin class or some language learning.

Eloise - Thanks for the comment on the poem. And it seems to me that you've got the right attitude. Though I am only 60, having survived both cancer and a heart attack over the last two decades, I'm well acquainted with the feeling of not knowing how much longer I might be able to work to realize my goals or to enjoy the things I enjoy. But in working on What Should I Do With The Rest of My Life? , it became clear to me, if it wasn't already, that the people I was interested in had a great ability to focus what engaged them and not on questions of "how much longer," of what they could easily have spent time fearing. Just as brain studies have shown us that imaging an act, particularly if we've already had experience with it, causes the brain to fire neural circuitry as if we were doing the act, I suspect there's a neural benefit in directing our free-floating thoughts toward what we want to do.

I'm wondering what examples of successful goal setting or visualization this group might have to share, since you all seem to have accomplished so much in recent years. For instance, has goal setting been important to learning Latin? Has visualization of something you hoped to do help you to do it?  -- Bruce