Category Archives: Ruminations on Life

Thoughts on why we are Alive and the Inevitable

Age Appropriate

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It has been said to me several times in the last year, “Wow, publishing your first book at the age of seventy-seven. That’s a big deal.”  I beg to differ. My age has nothing to do with writing other than I hope I have improved over the years. It’s as if my life culminated in this book. No, it hasn’t. If truth be told I have written enough over the years to compile as many volumes as the Encyclopedia Britannica. Publishing was never a priority or even a thought. I have written for seventy-eight years, no actually seventy-one years because my first novel was at the age of seven.

When we moved from Bellevue, Washington to Tucson in 1993, I jettisoned my journals, notebooks, and pages of writing to lighten the load. Boy, how I wish I had some of that back to fill in memories that are hazy now. Teen diaries with social events prominent, newlywed adventures, then pages of notes on my children as they grew up. Some pages were complaints, some were gratitude, some were hopes, some were sorrows – most were filled with the joy I felt watching my kids grow.

Of course, as writers do, I accumulated more journals, notebooks, and loose pages of writing in the intervening twenty-six years. They are not systematic or categorizable. I grab a notebook or journal when the spirit urges and start writing not caring what came before. I have journals with entries from 1997, 2005 and 2020. They are not in order because I start writing on whatever blank page I open to, so a 2017 entry may be before a 2005 one and heaven forbid if there is any theme articulated. This unstructured whimsy pattern is my life. My brain cannot do linear for more than a few minutes at a time.

Is there a right and wrong to writing? Absolutely not. Writers have to write. It is like breathing. It is an imperative to living. Age is not a factor in writing. There is nothing that says you can’t write after you are fifty or seventy or one-hundred. You don’t need an MFA or be on the best-seller list to write. Until I moved to Tucson the only writing class I had was a Freshman 102 class at WSU. A young professor tried to introduce newbie English majors to the idea of creative writing.

After we were settled in Tucson, I saw an ad for a writing class that sounded interesting and I thought it would also be a way of meeting people in my new town. I had no idea that class would introduce me to many other adults who loved to write “just because”. Indeed, I thought I’d be the only one there who wrote just for myself because “writer” meant a higher level of achievement than what I felt I had. Thankfully, I was wrong.

I met several people who love words and love putting them in some kind of order to tell stories. Our writers’ critique group was formed from a few people in that class and four of us stayed together for over twenty-five years. The book we wrote is to encourage other writers to create and maintain critique groups as a way of expanding and enhancing their writing experience. Creativity stays with you throughout your life.

Getting back to the age issue, I once knew a woman who dressed “inappropriately” for her age. She was in her late sixties, then early seventies when I knew her. She wore medium-heeled shoes with lacey bobby socks, fancy dresses that barely touched her knees and her long grey hair was done in braids, ponytail, or pigtails with ribbons and delicate butterfly clips depending on her whim and the time she took to get ready in the morning. She was petite, with a trim figure and her clothes looked good on her body, but they would have been more “appropriate” on her granddaughter. She was the hostess at a high-end restaurant in the town where we lived. She was courteous, on the ball, and did her job with confidence. She was NOT a nutcase. She was an individual. She loved people and it showed in her manner, her care with customers. I’m sure the first time people saw her, they were taken aback. I know I was. But after observing her over several years I knew she was authentic, not an act. I moved from that town so I’m not sure how long she remained in her job. I do know she had plenty of energy and enthusiasm for it and did it better than women who were in their twenties.

My point is people age differently, some are old at forty while others maintain their lust for life well into their eighties, even nineties. My grandmother was an example of someone who never let age determine her life trajectory. She was widowed at fifty-eight. She had no pension and social security was minimal. She went to live with and care for her elderly parents who lived into their nineties. When her parents passed away, two of her sisters (a widow and a divorcee) and a brother (a widower) moved in to share the family home and expenses. Four siblings in their seventies and eighties acted like four siblings in their teens. They teased, argued, hassled each other, and laughed in equal amounts. It was hilarious to visit them. If you overheard their conversations, you would never believe they were senior citizens. They all sounded like fourteen-year-olds.

Grandma developed congestive heart failure later in life, but it didn’t hold her back. She was a woman of boundless faith. The day she died she had been out helping her “old people”, those friends in their sixties and seventies (ten to twenty years younger than she) who relied on her to drive them to appointments and shopping. She went home after a busy day and said she didn’t feel well enough for dinner. She was taken to the hospital later and died of heart failure that night. Not once in my life did I ever hear her say anything about her age or infirmities. They were just not significant factors in her life. She created the best of each day she was given without excuses. I adored her for many reasons, her kindness, her generosity, her “get on with it” spirit, and aspire to be like her. She embraced the gift of each day. Age is a number not a state of being. A spirit cannot be defined by age.

Our Town

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On November 5th we hosted a pot-luck Texas Hold ‘Em poker party for a group of long-time friends. We ate outside on the back patio then went in for the card game. Our poker parties go back many many years. As couples, we used to meet regularly. When covid hit the parties became sporadic but we still met on occasion. In total, there are seventeen of us. Not everyone makes every party, but we try. The ladies of the group also gather monthly for dinner at a restaurant to celebrate a birthday. When there is no birthday that month we meet anyway to celebrate friendship. In October there was a garden party hosted by a couple who built a greenhouse during the pandemic. The incentive for that gathering was to show all the beautiful plants and vegetables they propagated during the last two years. Everyone left with a small basket of fresh veggies to make soup at home.

Ken and I owned a real estate company and, in 2002, hired our first agent. During the next couple of years, we added more agents. We met their spouses and became friends. We added some of our clients to the group and, over twenty-plus years, an enduring bond of friendship and support was created. That friendship continued even after we retired. We all managed through covid, vaxed or unvaxed. Two couples moved away for several years, one to California and the other to Minnesota, but returned and were immediately brought back into the fold. In 2021 one of our friends died but he is still very much in our thoughts and part of our conversations.

Potluck is our preferred kind of party, even if it doesn’t include poker. Everyone brings a favored dish to share. Just as potluck is a combination of foods, our group is a combination of individual talents. Each person contributes to the whole with their uniqueness. All are blessed with the knack of friendship – they listen, they make others feel comfortable. We poke fun at one another in gentle ways and in memory of all the good times together.  Laughter is a big part of every gathering.

The day after our party the 1940 film, Our Town was shown on TCM. I remember reading Thornton Wilder’s play in our 11th-grade English class taught by Mrs. Lupton. The play was performed by our high school drama club. Then again years later, Ken and I saw it performed by the Seattle Repertory Theater. Even though I am an oldy film buff, I had never seen the movie. The play takes place in the early 1900s and its human themes resonate today. I reflected on our party. As friends, we have known each other, not since childhood, but through years that included births (of grandchildren), love, divorce, marriage, illness, and death. We attended baby showers and followed the milestones of each grandchild. Now one of those grandsons is in basic training for the Air Force and there are still toddlers in the group. Life moves at a breathtaking pace. I am ever grateful for their continued friendship as we compare old veiny hands and the inconveniences of aging. We discuss travel plans, artistic endeavors, beloved pets, children’s achievements, the highlights of grandchildren, and celebrate each accomplishment. Poker is fun too and we all (yes, even Larry) cheer the winner.

Our Town was knocking on my consciousness. This post began life as an entry in my journal several weeks ago. Within days of my journal entry, I started and finished reading the novel Tom Lake by Ann Patchett in which a “character” in the story is the play Our Town. Hmmm, a coincidence? My journal is much longer and more detailed, but I decided to pare it down and post it since the play seems to be all around me from a movie to a novel and the sense of my own community around me. Funny how that happens – recurring themes. The life of a writer.

Officer Hershey times three

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In the space of two years, Officer Hershey came into my life three times.

In the 1990’s, we lived in a neighborhood at the top of a hill in Bellevue, Washington. On this particular morning, after my husband left for work, I ate breakfast, played with the dog, did some housework, and got ready for work. I’ve never been a morning person. I don’t get my head working much before 9 am. I was late two out of five mornings. I tried to make it up by being early at least once a week. Luckily, I worked for an old friend who put up with me.

I looked at the clock and, oh my, I had ten minutes to make the fifteen-minute drive to work. I jumped in the car and started down the long winding road from the top of the hill to Main Street. The speed limit was 25 because it was so curvy and, in places, steep. My foot never touched the accelerator, only the brake as I drove down the hill. This morning I didn’t pay attention to speed.  I was traveling between 40 and 45 mph when I saw the motorcycle cop behind me with his lights and siren. I pulled over. Darn, now I’d really be late and with a traffic ticket on top.

I rolled down the window and in my sweetest tones, “Good morning, Officer. I must have been going a bit fast.”

The officer had a big grin on his face like he’d caught the fish of the year. His badge said Officer J. Hershey. “May I see your license and registration young lady.”

I pulled the license from my wallet and the registration from the glove box and handed them to the policeman.

“You live on this hill,” he said.
“Yes, sir, Officer Hershey.”
“Then you travel up and down this hill a couple of times a day, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You know the speed limit here, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You know this is a dangerous road when it’s raining or icy, right?”
“Yes, sir and it’s a beautiful day today.”
“Are you on your way to work?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you love your husband?” His face became serious.

Now that one knocked me back. What was he getting at? That didn’t sound like a traffic citation question. I looked up and tried to see his eyes through his dark motorcycle goggles.
“Yes, sir.” I said with hesitation.

“Well, this is what I want you to do. When you get to work, call your husband. Tell him you love him and want to take him out to lunch. That lunch will cost about the same as the ticket I should be giving you. Apologize for driving too fast down this hill because it is not safe and tell him you won’t do it again.”

I let out a big breath. “No, ticket?” I asked.
“Not this time but I patrol this road so don’t let me catch you again.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

I did exactly as he instructed. I told Ken the impossible story of how I barely avoided a traffic ticket over our lunch.

A few months later, on a Saturday, I was in a traffic jam on one of the main streets in town. I was in the middle of three lanes inching forward little by little on my way to the mall. In my rear-view mirror, I saw a motorcycle cop working his way between the slow moving cars and when he got to my car, he put on his siren and lights. He gestured for me to move out of traffic into the parking lot of a business. Disgruntled, I signaled and began traversing the road through traffic. Other drivers were also made unhappy by this movement. I glanced again at the cop and realized it was Officer Hershey. What the heck? I couldn’t have been speeding, I was barely moving. Why was he pulling me over?

I parked in the lot. He got off his motorcycle and came to my window. “Please give me your license and registration,” he said.
He took a second look at me and said, “Oh, you again”.
“Yes sir. I couldn’t have been speeding. What’s wrong?”
“Please step out of the car.”

I did as I was asked wondering if he was going to give me a sobriety test or something. Very confused. The traffic on the street picked up a little as the light changed but it was still very congested.

“Come back here.” He gestured to the rear of my car.
“You don’t have a current license tag. You are out of compliance; your car license is expired.”

I looked and sure enough. The new stickers were not on my car.
“You’re right. I have the new stickers in the console. I asked my son to put them on for me last weekend, but I didn’t check. The little bugger didn’t do it.”
“How old is your son?”
“Fifteen.”
“Yah. That’s sounds about right. Get them out of the car.”
I did as he asked and handed them to him so he could see they were up to date.

He took a cloth from his jacket pocket and wiped off the license plate then took the sticker and put it on. Then he did the same for the front plate.
“Have a good day.” He said and touched his cap as he got on his motorcycle and moved back into traffic.
“Thank you again, Officer Hershey.”

Nearly a year later the tranquility of a Sunday morning in our hilltop neighborhood was shattered by a violent soundscape. Adults yelling. Young children screaming and crying. Car doors slamming. The crack of gunshots. A car engine roaring. Tires squealing. A car racing down the street. Ken and I looked at each other puzzled and he said, “I better go check what’s happened.” Out the front door, he went. A few minutes later he came back with our neighbor, Maryann, bloody, trembling in her pajamas, barefoot, with a coat thrown over her shoulder.

“She’s been stabbed. There’s blood everywhere inside and outside the house,” Ken said and went to call the police.

I took her into the bathroom to address her wounds. Fortunately, nothing was spurting or flowing. (I faint at the sight of blood). She told me how her estranged husband showed up uninvited and demanded to take the kids. They argued and he snatched the kids and took them to the car. Then he returned to the house and assaulted her with a knife, stabbing her several times before she could grab a gun from a kitchen drawer and shoot him.

Maryann and her family had moved into the rental house next door a few weeks before this incident and we’d only met them casually. We didn’t even know her husband had left the family.

Within minutes the doorbell rang. I answered and who stood before me but Officer Hershey. “Officer Hershey, come in,” I said in surprise.
“It’s Detective Hershey, now,” he answered, a serious look on his face as he entered the house with two other officers.

I sat with my arm around a quavering Maryann as she told her story to Detective Hershey. Ken was questioned by one of the other officers. Then the police took Maryann back to her house to continue investigating the scene. That was all we heard until we were called as witnesses at Maryann’s trial for attempted murder.  

As it turned out, Maryann was crazy, threatening her family when her husband moved out of the house. He wanted to get the children away before they were harmed. She knew he was coming over to get the kids and she staged the fight so she could have a motive for shooting him. She inflicted stab wounds on herself. Luckily she wasn’t a good shot. She wounded him in the neck, but he was able to get to the hospital for treatment and was okay. Maryann was sent to an asylum for the criminally insane.

We moved from the neighborhood soon after, not because of the shooting, but because it was a planned move. I never saw Officer/Detective Hershey again, but he remains a sweet memory. I looked him up online. In 2017, he retired as a Captain after 35 years in the police force with commendations and kudos from dozens of citizens in the city, especially high schoolers who appreciated his common sense approach to teens, his humanity.  He had a significant impact on young people in the city. He was called a legendary gentleman by one citizen. Bellevue was blessed with his service. Exemplary man and policeman. Thank you, Captain Hershey!


Look at that happy face. You can’t help but smile back.

The Wall

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I have a tiny piece of it – The Wall. The wall whose demolition I thought signaled hope and the end of division. The wall that came down in Berlin on November 9, 1989. Unlike other days that are seared into memory with feelings of foreboding, like J.F. Kennedy’s assassination, Elvis’ death, M.L. King’s assassination, Bobby Kennedy’s assassination, 9-11, this was a day of global celebration. I very clearly remember where I was the day when hundreds of people smashed that wall to pieces. I watched the event on TV in a hotel while at a business conference with my husband, feeling a sense of gratitude and relief that the symbol of oppression was destroyed. A friend was in Berlin when it came down and brought a piece of it to me. I can’t recall who he was. His face and name are lost in the labyrinths of my mind. But I still have that remnant of the wall in a small, bejeweled keepsake box in the top drawer of my dresser. It used to sit in a tray on top of the dresser where I could see it every day, but my cats taught me that anything visible could easily become invisible if they decided to swipe it; especially a small thing even if it represents a much bigger thing.

The Berlin Wall separated families physically by only a few feet but by deep canyons of ideology. We are still in that place. Walls are taken down only to have other walls built. Walls have been built forever – to keep people in as the Berlin wall, and to keep people out as the wall being built on our southern border, and the Great Wall of China that was designed in the 7th century BCE to keep out the invading Mongol hordes. People crash through walls at their own peril when what is on the other side is perceived to be more enticing than what is on their side. The world has been crashing our borders to get into a country that is labeled by some as racist, homophobic, oppressive, and discriminatory. The rapidly eroding American Dream. It is a country many still believe is better than what they left. Some European countries are attacked with the same fervor.

Humans build walls. That’s what we do. It is a conundrum. We build walls but we don’t like walls, so we tear them down. We surround our property, farms, ranches, and suburban plots with walls or fences. Office spaces are defined by boundaries. Even the homeless mark out their plots to squat. What is that all about?

I am not naïve as I once was, believing we could all live together in peace and harmony if we would only try. Seventy-odd years of life swept that dream away. Sorry Martin Luther King. In the timeless myth of King Arthur, the king explained that when Merlin, the wizard, turned him into a bird, he flew high above the land and could not see where one county ended and another began because the earth doesn’t designate boundaries, only people do. John Lennon wrote about a world without boundaries in the song Imagine. “Imagine no countries, it isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for and no religion too.” A world to wish for but, despite our rhetoric, that is not what human beings do. It’s sad but it is human nature. In the words of another King, Rodney, who in 1992 survived a brutal police beating and subsequent riots in his name, “Can’t we all just get along?”

I can only do what I can do to make others feel welcome and accepted provided they do not threaten me with harm. Their religion, nationality, sexual proclivities, or political beliefs are of no interest to me if they are friendly and interesting to talk with. I confess I have a wall around my backyard too. It keeps out the deer, javelina, and coyotes who have not yet figured out how to open the gate. The bobcats and quail, however, jump the wall and the bunnies squeeze through the weepholes. I’m okay with that. We live in harmony.

Odyssey of the Mind

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Odyssey: A long and adventurous journey or experience.

Homer wrote the epic poem The Odyssey 700 years before Christ was born. Poor Odysseus is beset by many challenges as he wends his way home after the Trojan Wars. The theme of a hero’s homeward journey of discovery has been reimagined many times since Homer. James Joyce echoed the themes as his hero Ulysses negotiated life in Dublin at the turn of the 20th Century. The Cohen Brothers rewrote the story in their film O Brother Where Art Thou? in the year 2000. Themes from the story have been reworked many times.

Our family experienced an odyssey for fourteen months, driving across the U.S. in 1984-1985, an adventure of a lifetime. I wrote a little about that trip in my blog post Technology for the Baby Boomer. Our grandson, born twenty-three years later, led me into another Odyssey. He came home from kindergarten one day and told his mother he wanted to join a group called Odyssey of the Mind. She asked what it was, and he told her there was a meeting of parents to learn about it that he wanted her to attend. She enlisted Ken and I to go along. A teacher from school explained the program which is an annual international problem-solving tournament for kids from kindergarten through college. They compete according to grade level. At last count, twenty-five countries participate.

The motto of OM is that for every problem, there is a solution. They believe learning should be fun and that there are always new uses for old items. The idea is to encourage creative problem-solving. The simplest explanation of the program is that each year, there are five categories of challenges issued by the International Odyssey of the Mind Association. Within each category are six problems to be solved. A team of five to seven kids chooses their problem and they work from October to February to come up with a solution that is presented to judges in late February at the first of three competitions. Teams are created by an Odyssey coordinator at the school. Team meetings are as often as the coach and kids decide, generally starting at once a week and becoming almost daily toward the end of the five months. In that time the kids conceive a solution to the problem they choose, create a script/story to explain their solution, each team member assumes a role, makes their own costumes and props, create a set that can be constructed on stage within perimeters set by the rules, and present the solution to the judges in an eight-minute skit. Easy? Not so much.

Power tools

Adults are not allowed to assist in ANY portion of the process. Teams are penalized if a mom or coach even brushes someone’s hair before the performance. Any suggestion is automatically discarded if it comes from someone outside the team. The team takes great pride in not sharing their story or their work with anyone until the dress rehearsal when families are invited to preview their performance. In elementary school, the costumes were cobbled together with items found at Goodwill or in the back of closets. Tape, glue, and staples were used in the construction of costumes since none of the kids could sew. An adult is allowed to show the team how to use certain tools. Ken helped them learn how to use power tools safely, but we could only watch as they used them.

A coach’s job is to guide the kids, not with ideas, but with questions such as “what if…? How would you make or do that? How could you tell that story? How can you adapt an item or make something to do that job? How can you make that funny or more interesting?” The adult coach may NOT offer solutions during the creative process, only guidance in following the rules of the program. There is a whole book of rules aimed at keeping competition fair. As the team starts developing their solution, the coach asks if they are on track to answer the problem and if the plan can be performed on a stage twelve feet by fifteen feet.  As I said, this is an international competition. It is judged at a world final in March of each year. Each team enters a local competition, then if they are chosen first or second place, they enter a state competition and finally, if they win, they are invited to the world competition where they meet teams from all over the globe who have won their divisions. A spontaneous competition is held on the same day as the skit competition. Each team is taken into a room without their coach and given a problem they must solve in ten minutes. That instant problem-solving skill is practiced throughout the year as the team works on their big presentation. Creative thinking, team building, and cooperative problem solving are skills that people need throughout their lives. Odyssey of the Mind builds great problem solvers.

Since our daughter was a single mom and full-time breadwinner, she did not have time to be a coach. Henry turned to me. “Grandma”, says he, “will you be a coach?” Can I turn down any request by my grandson?  So I became a coach. I jumped in with both feet, having no idea what I was doing or what I would learn along the way. I fell in love with the competition and with each one of my team members. I coached four different teams in four years through four very different problems. It was a true odyssey – a journey of discovery. One year, Henry did not participate so I volunteered as a judge at the local competition. I learned how very inventive young minds are. If adults are not directing them, the sky is the limit. Adult minds can put brakes on imagination. The kids come up with amazing, creative solutions, costumes, props, and backdrops on their own – beyond anything I could imagine.

A month before competition each year I was sure my team would not be able to complete their task because something was missing in their presentation. I felt they were sailing their ship right off the edge of the earth. I racked my brain for strategies to help them find their way from the brink and stood helplessly watching the disaster unfold. I read and reread the rules to them, asking them to reevaluate their presentation. Each year they continued to work diligently toward the goal. They didn’t seem to feel the pressure. I didn’t sleep the whole week before the competition, knowing how disappointed they would be to not complete their task after all the time spent on it. I was riddled with anxiety, reevaluating each step in their progress. Each year, they proved me wrong. They found a way to make it happen every time. They always surprised me. At the end of each competition, I was in awe of my team’s abilities. By the fourth year, I learned to relax and have complete confidence in the team.

Wonder Newcast: Alex, Liam, Henry, Ava, Molly, & Addison

In 2018 the team, Team Wonder, did a presentation taking the Alice in Wonderland story in a new direction. They created a newscast that included an interview with the White Rabbit and the Cheshire Cat. The question was who stole the Queen’s tarts with the flamingo as the hidden camera. They had a news anchor, an interviewer, the White Rabbit and Cheshire Cat, a flamingo, and a commercial pitchman selling Wonka bars. It was hilarious.

Team Wonder
Back: Coach Diana, Bethany Papajohn (Principal) Front: Emmy, Steven, Henry, Sierra, Zaylei and Peter

One year the team came in third in the OM local competition and didn’t get to go on to state. Their problem was to recreate Leonardo Da Vinci’s workshop and conceive a new invention Leonardo may have devised. Their story took place in two time periods, modern daand the 1400’s. They had so much fun with their skit they begged me to ask if they could present it to the school at an assembly. I asked the principal who said she would consider it. The auditorium had many uses. It was occupied most of each day. Assemblies were carefully scheduled, and it was near the end of the school year. Finally. the last week of school the principal agreed to let the team make the presentation. She said it would not be a mandatory assembly, so each teacher had discretion about bringing their classes. My team was over-the-moon excited. Ken and I hauled all the costumes, props, and set fixtures (mostly made of cardboard) to school. It had been two months since the OM competition, and they had not had a practice. We did one practice session before the assembly. I told them they might have only a few in the audience. As the auditorium began to fill we realized that most of the school came. I sat in the audience to watch not knowing how it would go after so much time passed. The team got on stage and recognized they were not bound by the eight-minute time limit. They began to riff and improvise on their skit. I looked at Ken in astonishment. They were having so much fun. The applause was loud, and the kids were in their glory. They may have been third in the official competition, but they won the hearts of their schoolmates.

Team Time Twister: Leonardo’s Workshop Emmy, Sierra, Zaylei, Steven, Henry, Oliver
Improv – creating the script
The Thinkerton Detective Agency

The last year that I coached, the team chose to solve the heretofore unsolved mystery of the Mary Celeste, a ship that was found in 1872 abandoned in the Atlantic without its crew, but otherwise intact with its cargo. What happened to the crew? They created the Thinkerton Detective Agency to investigate and find an answer. At the end of five months of hard work, the team presentation was timed at nine minutes. They tried and tried to do it faster, to get it shorter. No amount of magical thinking could change the clock. Teams are penalized for each second over eight minutes and it will generally take a team score out of contention. Dress rehearsal the night before competition was a calamity. My cousin, a school teacher, was visiting and watched the preview. She shook her head and looked at me. “How are they going to get this together?” I just smiled knowing that somehow they’d pull it off. I won’t say there weren’t tremors in my gut, but I had learned to ignore them. Early on the morning of competition, we gathered at the high school where judging took place, and they went over their skit in the parking lot – still over time. Right then and there they decided what to take out. They improvised a new script, they practiced twice, and it came in under eight minutes. They presented their improvised story at the competition. Of course, the judges would never know it was not the original script. At the beginning of their skit, a part of the backdrop/scenery broke, and they had to repair it on the fly. I caught my breath. They prepared in advance for mishaps by having extra parts, tape, scissors, and wire available on set. It was a true example of preparation and situational spontaneous problem solving just like MacGyver– exactly what Odyssey of the Mind teaches. Seamlessly, repairs were made and the skit continued without pause. They won the competition.

Our team was invited to the state competition. It was the beginning of covid and the tournament was in chaos because it is a hands-on, in-person event. Rules changed, everything changed, and the judging was to be by video. The team chose not to participate. They took their win and trophy for the school.

WINNERS! Back: Connor, Henry, Mandeep Front: Sierra, Emmy, Zaylei

I am forever grateful for the time I spent with all the children I coached in Odyssey of the Mind, they were my teachers.  I know each of them will be better equipped for their future after participating in OM, learning the tools of creative problem-solving.

I think of life as my soul’s odyssey through this earthly existence on its way home. We all have adventures and challenges along the way. At this point I can look back and see how very fortunate I am. My life has been fulfilling and good times are abundant, but I’ve come to realize that it is during the tumultuous times that the most valuable lessons are learned. No one gets out alive so enjoy the voyage and pay attention to the lighthouses along the way that guide you through rough seas and through the shoals.

Technology for a Baby Boomer

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Here I am after more than three-quarters of a century looking back at some of the changes that occurred during that lifetime. The biggest technical change is the explosion of personal data devices. I did not get a cell phone until about twenty years ago. I was one of those people who said, “I’ll NEVER have a cell phone!!” I considered them an intrusion. I resisted and resisted. Then it became obvious that a cell phone was a necessary accompaniment to my daily lifestyle.

At the time my mother had moved to Tucson and was in need of close attention. She lived on her own but was in her 80s and had moved from the town where she lived for most of her life, away from lifelong friends and familiar places. She needed contact not only for personal needs and information about how to get around a new town, but also for company. My work took me out of the office, so I was not always available by landline. I believed she would find friends fairly quickly but, in the meantime, I was her social link, her sounding board, her complaint department, her connection to the world.

I discovered I needed a cell phone for business. Ken and I had just started a property management and real estate company and the need for quick exchanges of information became evident. So there I was, a new and reluctant cell phone user.

Looking way back…In the mid-1980s my family of three teenagers, two dogs, my husband and I, left our home in Bellevue Washington to travel the country. We journeyed through the forty-eight contiguous states plus a couple of Canadian Provinces and Mexican states for fourteen months. We took two of our kids out of high school (the third had just graduated). They wanted to keep up their studies while traveling so they could stay up in grade with their friends when we returned. That was accomplished with a study program coordinated by the University of Missouri and Bellevue High School. Correspondence courses were mailed (years before email) to us by the University and then back to the University as they completed each section and results were reported to their high school. All communication was by public phone in phone booths across the country and by mail, snail mail. Lots of postage. We had no cell phone and no computer. We were off the grid so to speak. Amazingly they were able to complete their studies in English, History, Math, and Social Studies – the basics, while learning firsthand about our beautiful country, its regions, its national parks, its varied cultures and languages (English has many nuances), history and geography. We took advantage of public libraries and museums along the way. Being teenagers imprisoned with their parents 24/7 for fourteen months, traveling in a van, living in a travel trailer, was indeed a sentence few would volunteer for. The only “device” they had for entertainment were Walkman cassette players with earphones. Those were revolutionary in that time. It was their means of escape into personal head space. I must give them all credit for their stalwart determination to survive. I’m sure it felt to them akin to traveling by covered wagon across the country. We crisscrossed the country from sea to shining sea four times in our quest to visit every state. How did we manage without a cell phone, GPS, the internet?

My how times have changed. Now the idea of leaving my house without a fully charged cell phone makes me quake with anxiety. What if something breaks down, what if my (fill in the blank) _________, husband, friend, daughter, grandson, needs to talk to me, an emergency, what if I get lost and need direction? What if, what if, what if?  I can hardly believe the intense change from being a NEVER-CELLPHONER to being a NEVER-BE- WITHOUT-A-CELLPHONER.

Technology has certainly changed my life. For better?

Autumn – a seasonal complaint

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I am the ONLY person I know who does not sing the praises of Autumn. All my friends look forward to the cessation of our desert heat when the humidity drops to single digits. They express endless gratitude for the crisp cool air and colors of fall. Me – not so much. Each season does have good points, but for me the darkening of days, the cooling air, the descent into winter does not herald a positive trend.

Along with this is the churning of time. I don’t mean the minutes that ebb from my life, a steady drip into the bucket of forever. I’m talking about the changing of clocks. One reason I love Arizona is that this state did not get sucked into the folly of daylight “savings” time. Our clocks remain the same through all the months of the year. However, because everyone else in the U.S. changes time, I must remember which time zone they have switched to. Annoying. I’m sure someone sometime had a savvy presentation with charts and graphs to justify the idea. But as a wise old Native American was once credited with saying: “Only a white man would cut two inches off the bottom of his blanket and sew it to the top and think the blanket is longer”. That sums up the ridiculousness of daylight-saving time. What are we saving? Which bank is it in? Can we spend it when we really need it? Daylight is one of nature’s gifts and follows the tilt of the sun and earth according to seasons, not a man-made device. No matter how you slice it we have the same amount of daylight. It is shorter in the winter in the northern hemisphere and longer in the summer, but the number of hours can’t be expanded by moving the hands of a clock.

I am a warm-weather sunshine person. My husband agreed to move to Tucson so I could warm up after living forty years in the Pacific Northwest in a constant state of chill and I don’t mean the trendy kind. We’ve lived here twenty-seven years so I’m beginning to thaw. However, when temperatures dip below 80°, I put on long underwear. No kidding, even in Tucson – you can ask my husband. I get frosty to the bone very easily. No, it is not a medical condition, it is a mental condition. Thankfully the sun shines here most of the time in all seasons thus providing us, the cold-blooded creatures, with a modicum of warmth during each day. Darkness does not overtake us as it did in Seattle.

In the Pacific Northwest, fall and winter are not only colder and wetter than summer, they are also darker. Daylight is barely nine hours. We got up in the dark and came home from work in the dark. Dull skies muffled in blankets of gray clouds during what was said to be daylight hours did not allow a smidge of sun to peek through. Sunshine was as rare as a Corbin Carroll home run in the 2023 World Series. Depression – your name is Seattle winter.  

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday so that is the plus for Autumn.  In Tucson, we serve our big Thanksgiving meal about 4:00 on the patio. We usually have twelve or more family and friends join us. The doors stay open and people go in and out. Turkey is cooked on the barbeque and all the trimmings are set out on the counter so the hungry can help themselves. They choose to sit inside in the dining room or out on the patio tables. Most often outside is favored. After dinner (when the sun retires leaving a beautiful sunset) we put on a sweater or light jacket to sit outside with a glass of wine and good conversation and watch the stars blink on. We build a fire in the chimenea for atmosphere. It is a beautiful celebration with friends. The weather doesn’t cooperate one out of four years. Then we serve dinner inside just like those unfortunate people who don’t live in the Sonoran Desert.

It Isn’t Lost !

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I have volumes of stories about my children and some of their friends as they encountered life in their first years. One of my favorites is about our middle child, our second daughter, the quiet one.

Shari attended morning kindergarten at the elementary school around the corner from our house. Our backyard abutted the playfield. After school she would come home for lunch and tell about her day. Several times a week my husband came home for lunch also. His office was not far from our house and he liked to spend lunchtime with Shari, our three-year-old son Casey, and me. On this particular day in October, Shari’s class went to a pumpkin patch. Each child was to bring a quarter to buy a pumpkin to bring home. Shari arrived home without a pumpkin. Ken arrived at the same time, and this was their exchange.

“Hey Shar, did you have fun at the pumpkin patch?”

“Yes Daddy, I saw lots and lots of biiiiiig punkins.”

“Did you bring one home?”

“Nope. I didn’t have my quarter.”

Ken made sure she had a quarter before he left for work that morning.

“You lost your quarter?”

“No. I didn’t have it.”

“I gave you a quarter this morning.”

“I know Daddy, but I didn’t have it to buy the punkin.”

“You lost your quarter,” he said.

“No.”

“If I gave you a quarter and you didn’t have it, you lost it.”

“No, I DIDN’T lose it.” she said with emphasis.

“Do you still have it?”

“No.”

“Then it is lost.”

“It isn’t lost. I know ‘xactly where it is. It fell between the bus seat and the bus wall. I know where it is, but I can’t get it. It ISN’T lost.”

Case closed. No quarter, no pumpkin but the quarter is NOT lost. I was sure she would grow up to be Clarence Darrow. Her logic was flawless; her argument, decisive. Even her daddy could not shake her. She knew what lost meant and she didn’t waiver.

I am entranced by little people. Any child between birth and eight years old, I find enchanting. I can spend hours watching and talking with them. At one time I wanted to be a second-grade teacher like Miss Jones, with whom I felt a special rapport. Instead, I became a mother. Although those years between birth and eight didn’t last as long with my own children as they would have with year after year of new students in school, I thoroughly enjoyed those times. After the age of eight, children are lured into our larger social structure through school and activities, and they lose that innocent view of the world. Much of the awe is exchanged for a comfort with the reality around them.

I am so privileged to have been a stay-at-home mom. I was able to experience the day-to-day wonder as each child began their journey. Now I think it is a rare privilege. It seems that mothers these days are required to work outside the home for financial reasons or choose to do so because of career choices.

My own mother was a working mom, through choice as much as necessity. I resented that for many years even though I know what she sacrificed to keep both sides of her life humming along. I wanted her to be home with me as all the other kids had their moms at home. My parents did their very best to provide in-home daycare for me. I never went to an outside babysitter or daycare center. Even though I had terrific nannies who I remember with fondness, it still wasn’t Mom. My husband and I agreed that when we had children, I would be home with them. He often worked two jobs to make sure we could provide that lifestyle. Thus, I was able to be a part of those special moments in each child’s life. Many I recorded in journals and many more I have probably forgotten but the echo of that special time remains.

Then and Now – Perspectives of War

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Erica began to tremble. I was seated next to her at our table on the restaurant patio. It was a beautiful spring Tucson day in 2018. We were having lunch at a popular restaurant with three other women volunteers from the hospital surgery center. I noticed a flash of unease cross her face.

“Erica, are you all right?”

“It’s nothing,” she replied.

“You were trembling just now. Are you cold?”

“No, it is an old body memory that I can’t stop.”

“Body memory of what?”

“The war,” she said. “I start shaking when I hear a plane overhead.” 

I hadn’t even noticed the sound but did hear it faintly as the plane flew away.

A native of Germany, Erica emigrated to the US with her husband in the 1950s. They established a business and home in the Midwest and raised their son as an American citizen.  Erica was a widow, now in her mid-eighties. I knew that much of her story. She volunteered one morning a week at the surgery center of our local hospital, as did I. We occasionally had lunch together. I liked hearing about the customs and recipes she brought from Germany. She made luscious baked goods to share with hospital staff. I enjoyed her wit and positive attitude – always available to help someone.

At lunch that day we talked more about her experiences growing up in a small village in central Germany. During WWII, Allied bombing raids passed over their farm on their way to targets unknown by those on the ground. Bombs were dropped on nearby towns. If she was outside she would run to shelter fearing death from the sky at any moment. The imprint of terror stayed with Erica from the time she was nine or ten throughout her long life in the United States. A teenage brother was killed in one of the bombings, wrong time, wrong place. Even with the lasting repercussions of war for her and her family, Erica had no animus against the men who “did their duty”, or the country that directed those bombers. She was taken in as an immigrant and her family thrived here. She had nothing but gratitude to the U.S.

Many times, I read my father’s journal of his twenty-eight bombing missions during WWII from December 1943 through July 1944. He was the waist gunner on the plane that led the entire Eighth Air Force in the invasion of Normandy on zero day – D-Day June 6, 1944. Unlike bombs dropped on Warsaw, Helsinki, Hamberg, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, London, and Stalingrad that killed thousands of citizens of those cities, none of the bombing raids by his crew were directed at civilian populations. Their targets were strategic military installations and industrial war factories. Of course, civilians were in those places as well, but residential areas were not the focus according to his journal entries.

Dad’s plane, The Red Ass

My dad never talked about his wartime experiences, and I didn’t find out about them until many years after he died at the age of fifty-two. I was proud of his part in securing victory over the Axis Powers in Europe. Never once did I consider the fear that must have sprouted and flourished in the psyche of those helpless folks on the ground who heard the giant purveyors of doom swooping in overhead. They experienced daily the trauma of the unknown – would it be their town or farm this time?

Talking with Erica gave me an entirely different perspective on what war was like for the nameless faceless people who had to endure the decisions made by the powerful. Even after more than seventy years, Erica still visibly trembled at the sound of an airplane overheard. Truly innocent human beings, who wanted to live with their families in peace, became victims of war. A war that had to be endured in the best way possible to survive. It became very personal and was made vivid to me because of her stories. My pride in my dad is tempered by the realization of the physical and psychological damage inflicted even without dropping a bomb. The weapon is terror.

I’m left with the unanswerable question. Why do human beings war with each other?  There has not been a time in recorded history that we have not had wars somewhere. Even oral traditions celebrate war and victories over enemies.  Our instinctive tribal nature divides us. The reach for power continues to exploit that instinct. When will we learn? As the song says, “There is no profit in peace.” 1  Until unelected oligarchs in our country and around the world, who wield the cudgel of dominance behind the scenes with endless supplies of money, cede power (not likely), or are ousted from power, war is inevitable. George Orwell described in his novel, 1984, how a small minority benefits from war and must keep the general populace dumbed down and compliant by force and fear. Is that the purpose of continuing to divide and segment us by our differences rather than uniting us in our common humanity? Hmmmm. That is the moral question.

  1. Profit in Peace by Ocean Colour Scene

Thursday is Tuesday?

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I know it is probably one of those “age” symptoms. It could also be related to the fact of retirement when weekdays don’t have the same definition as when I was employed or with kids in school. I believe many retired people can relate. However, I think more than anything there is a missing cog in my brain.  I have trouble keeping days of the week in their proper sequence, time in steady check, and my location relative to my destination.

Thursday is designated clean-up day at our house. I was sitting on the patio enjoying this beautiful morning unfold at sunrise, watching the birds and having my tea thinking of the quiet day ahead and Ken said, “We better get started for our walk. I want to get back so I can get the vacuuming done early.”  

Clean up? Today? It’s Thursday again? I was thinking it was Tuesday. What happened to Tuesday? Oh, yeah – it was a busy day and flew by very quickly. Then Wednesday happened and here we are at Thursday with things to do and dinner plans with friends.

I wrote a post last November about weekends. In it I wrote about the dowager Countess on Downton Abbey played so brilliantly by Maggie Smith. The family was having a discussion about the weekend and she piped up, “Weekend? What is a weekend?” Of course, in her world each day had its own significance related to social duties, but they were not put in categories of weekday and weekend days. Days were all the same – another day. I’m not a countess and I struggled to manage life within those weekday boundaries, but I slipped those bonds since retirement.

Ever since I can remember, I have had a tenuous relationship with time and space, so keeping track of days, times, and place are a challenge for me. Ken, who I labeled Steady Eddie in an earlier post, has always been my tether to those things that are assigned the when and where in our life. He reminds me of earthbound values that I easily forget in my spacey way. He likes to be places early and I am apt to be late. Between us we are usually on time. He knows the directions to every place he has gone before and magically knows how to find his way to destinations he’s never been to before. It is difficult for me to find my way out of our cul-de-sac. You can ask any/all of my friends and family who fall into two categories. They either laugh with me being lost or late, or they get very annoyed. Fortunately, we laugh – a lot. If I am the designated driver, I always need a co-pilot to navigate even to places with which I am familiar or I will most definitely be late.

So here we are at Thursday. I did enjoy Tuesday; and, Wednesday was a quiet day, reading and writing. Tomorrow, I have an appointment mid-day that Ken won’t let me forget. It will be Friday.