a. Where would we all get together for a Picnic day?
b. Name the food(s) you'd bring or cook insight!
c. What games would we play?
d. Would there be a kids table? or not?
e. What would the campfire be like?
Doug sez!
a. A West Virginia state park with a running creek/brook
b. Pinki would make Deviled Eggs and "Bill". Bill is a name she came up with for her unique pastry invention- a special cream cheese filled long baked pastry..
c. RISK !! or Backgammon (I'm pretty good)
d. Not applicable - doggies?
e. Wood. circular. Maybe a shared reading in our own voice and tone of something interesting- ? Edgar Allen Poe? Something with character? A bit of Shakespeare reading? I have a very deep radio-esque voice. a lost calling 😉
In scouts we used to have get togethers: My brother would grill bacon wrapped filet mignon over a campfire (mmmmmmm), loads of fixin's with it. We got out rope and entertained people with knot tying. After the meal and clean up we'd play backgammon. We'd roast s'mores over the campfire, also popping popcorn. We'd then share stories about the campfire, trying to induce a laugh or two.
Where did we host this? The Mary Gray Bird Sanctuary outside of Connersville, IN.
Back from the food warehouse. Just me: Teengirl stayed home being poorly. It is Thanksgiving Food Drive time for neighborhoods and organizations, and there were massive amounts of donations to sort.
We have a food pantry in Richmond, that our meeting supports. We have one day a month where we volunteer to staff it. I also leave food in multiple "food pantries"; these are anonymous-ish, you leave food, someone takes food. When I go to Wal-Mart, I try to add some food to my shopping, put it in a separate bag, and deliver it.
At our Richmond food pantry, we have lists of what people may receive, and we give them a lot of food. I tried to help them, but there is some parochialism going on. We noticed they needed some work done, and our troop had scouts needing some volunteer hours, but they wouldn't work with us...Sad!
For the past ten years I've mostly taught MBAs. When I taught seniors, I used to give extra credit to students who brought in canned/boxed goods at the end of the school year. They actually enjoyed it! I'd get enough to fill my car trunk with food, which we donated. Although one year a student added a bag or oreos, to see if I'd eat them or not. I did not. I tried to get the faculty who taught in that to continue it, but they thought it was too difficult to do. 🤦♂️
a. Announce it in class
b. bring a printout to class with everyone's name, and highlight the names of those donating food.
c. Add points to the final grades of those students.
There is always an enormous amount of food. The challenge is getting it sorted and distributed, especially when perishable items are involved.
A lot of what is coming in now is canned goods, and those have to be sorted into "part of a Thanksgiving meal box" and "not part of a Thanksgiving meal box" and then into individual kinds of items. A lot of work, but everyone is always very pleasant.
I miss the "holiday rush" at the food bank. The food bank had day and night shifts, and it was the first time in my life I could put in a goodly amount of hours during the day helping others. Whoever one worked alongside, we had fun.
I realize it's very sad that such a wealthy country should need busy food banks, but it is a great opportunity for high impact volunteering providing immediate help.
I mailed a check to our metropolitan food bank last week. The Greater Chicago Food Depository has been around since, I want to say the 1980s, and really does a great job. The breakthrough concept that I think they helped popularize back then is that there is much perfectly good surplus food (including fresh food) that does not need to go to waste if there is an organization to manage the logistics of collection from various sources and distribution to the pantries and other programs.
And because they're humans with some common sense, they'll probably do the sorting correctly. It might be risky to leave it up to AI's notion of what does or does not belong in a Thanksgiving meal.
Knowing that one is being a helper, at least for today, is conducive to a good atmosphere, I would think.
Re the mothership, I've been having some interesting exchanges with Member Services. I am encountering a peculiar combination of helpfulness and cluelessness.
I was getting some banners on podcasts and articles informing me that my credit card expires this month and I should update it now. But it doesn't expire this month; it expires in December, and I won't have the updated information until the new card arrives, right? In addition to November charges going through, they should go through in December because credit cards are good through the end of the expiration month.
So I explained this in an e-mail, and received assurance that the web team has been asked to fix their banner. And I responded with thanks and a plug for my wacky notion that information sent out ought to be accurate and that humans should take responsibility.
Got no argument there, but then the young lady asked me (again) if I was successful in updating my information. I had to explain (for the second or third time) that I can't do that until the card arrives, and why I can't do it until the card arrives: because that's how I'll find out the new information.
What is the matter with me? Apparently I am assuming too much in these interactions. What should I be assuming?
Yeah, that did occur to me. Probably supposed to keep asking me if I did as instructed until I say yes I did. Apparently nothing in the script says what to do with a subscriber's explanation that that is not possible, so they have no choice but to ignore that part of it.
My other hypothesis was that the person is actually an AI bot. I consider that highly unlikely even given The Dispatch's frequent and ongoing reversion to the opposite of their professed business model. But I will be keeping the idea in the back of my mind.
Alfredo sauce is surprisingly easy to make--even I can do it. Grating the hard cheeses is the hardest part.
I watched my sister's MIL--off the boat Italian--make pesto many times. Too bad phones didn't have cameras back then! We all have the recipe my sister wrote down from Nonna, but it isn't the same. Am sure it's the technique and Nonna's love.
The word retire comes from the French verb se retirer, which means “to withdraw.” The French verb, in turn, is composed of Latin cognates that literally mean “to draw back” or “to pull back.”
When retire came to English in the 1500s, it described soldiers withdrawing from a battlefield to safer ground. Over time, the meaning broadened to include any kind of withdrawal or retreat, including the ideas of retiring to one’s sleeping chamber or retiring from the world, as we see in someone choosing to live a life of seclusion.
The modern sense of the word—withdrawal from one’s occupation or career—didn’t become standard until the early 1800s, when modern working conditions combined with a longer life expectancy to create the need for a word to describe the formal cessation of a lifetime of working.
“Work almost always has a double aspect; it is a bondage, a wearisome drudgery; but it is also a source of interest, a steadying element, a factor that helps to integrate the worker w/ society. Retirement reflects this ambivalence, & it may be looked upons either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap.” -Simone de Beavoir, in the Coming of Age (1970)
Few milestones in life stir up a wider range of emotions than retirement. For day laborers, blue-collar workers, and others who’ve spent a lifetime in physically demanding jobs, the day of retirement is often hard-won and deeply welcomed. In a sad irony, though, the very work that makes retirement so richly deserved also commonly results in battered bodies that are unable to take advantage of new-found leisure time.
For those who’ve enjoyed satisfying and fulfilling careers, but are ready to begin a new chapter of their lives, retirement feels less like an ending than a new beginning—a perfect opportunity to travel, paint, write, teach, volunteer, play bridge, learn a new language, return to an old hobby, take up the piano, play golf or pickleball, act in community theater, hike mountain trails, take long beach walks at sunrise or sunset, or simply live each day without a demanding work schedule calling all the shots. In essence, it’s retirement as creative transition, with decisions about what to do guided by personal interests rather than the demands of a job.
For people who are forced to retire early, either because of corporate downsizing, mandatory retirement policies or—as we see so often with athletes who’ve suffered career-ending injuries—nothing is more dreaded than retirement. When people are expecting to make a graceful transition at some distant point in the future, a forced early retirement can quickly devolve into a personal crisis.
Ernest Hemingway’s famous observation:
“The worst death for anyone is to lose the center of his being, the thing he really is. Retirement is the ugliest word in the language.”
For every person forced to retire early, however, there are many more who continue working even though they’re no longer up to the demands of the job. Sometimes it’s out of financial need, of course, but far more often, it’s because they can’t walk away from something that’s been essential to their identity and happiness
Socioeconomic status is another factor that significantly shapes how retirement is viewed—and ultimately experienced. From this vantage point, the evidence is hard to ignore: the lower one’s economic standing, the greater the anxiety about retirement.
Retirement scares many because there are so few to blame if they don’t enjoy it. — John O. Huston
I really think that it’s better to retire...when you still have some snap left in your garters. — Russell B. Long
As in all successful ventures, the foundation of a good retirement is planning. — Earl Nightingale
Retiring must not mean just vegetating. — Edward Steichen
“Gain all we can, save all we can, and give all we can.” What might that look like in our lives today?
Massive envy. I was forced into retirement by my health, and it was a difficult decade just to not keep looking back as a career I loved. And to stop waking up at 5:30 am.
Good morning. 35 degrees with a predicted high of 60. I de-leaved the backyard yesterday, today I plan to get the front yard done, which is a smaller task.
The mothership reports that a provision in the bill ending the shutdown included a provision that closes a loophole allowing intoxicating hemp products, like gummies sold in gas stations, to exist legally, outside of the state level taxes and regulations on medical and/or recreational marijuana. FP’s TGIF is headlining “The Al-Qaeda Commander’s Perfume”.
My wife and I have found Delta 8 (very low THC content) to be unusually effective in pain management and as a sleep aid. My wife is allergic to essentially every pain medication available. At her last knee replacement surgery the only thing that reduced/eliminated her pain was Delta 8. Her surgeon helpfully approved her little bottle, and had the nurses slap an 'approved medication' sticker on it. At the present time it is legal in WV.
On the recommendation of a friend (from church!) I tried Delta 9 for pain management. Boy, that stuff is like a time bomb for me, even one drop. I got rid of it quickly.
My 2 daughters, on the other hand, are heavily into THC. One is in Seattle (kind of goes with the territory) and one is in TX. The one in TX has a PhD in Psychology. She also has lots of strange mushroom literature at her house, which I don't care to peruse.
I take it you do not combust the Delta 8 (which converts it to Delta 9.) You do realize marijuana is not addicting (tongue firmly implanted in my cheek.)
Even in college I never touched the stuff. I have always been strongly against 'mood altering' substances of all types. My life is plenty interesting, I don't need any help in making it more interesting ;)
I know a thing or two about those hemp products. The hemp gummies can’t give you the psychoactive high like the THC gummies. However, the hemp flower is another story. It’s not psychoactive unless you combust it which converts the THCA to THC. There are percentages on the package like 37.69% THCA which means when you combust it, something like 87% of that percentage is the THC concentration which is hella strong. Every state may as well be legal. This loophole should’ve been closed at the time the farm bill was passed in 2018.
One of my good veterinarian friends, who literally founded the area called "pain management" for animals, has his own growth for ultra low THC. He is a science leader in pain management, well sought out. His lectures on the mechanisms of CBD, are great, insightful. We used his drops for our Gumbi's pain management in his hospice stage
One of my co-author friends has cancer and does THC consumables for the chemo. He actually looks forward to being stoned for two days. He's not as productive for research then, either. But he tells me the thc concentration today is much higher than when he was a kid.
My weathers are supposed to be 69 this afternoon and 70s during the day on the weekend. Interesting info about the marijuana products, and I do miss reading TGIF, at least when Nellie writes it.
It's an old story about the Sierra Club. The NYT had the major article on this. I also experienced it personally.
Now, I am known in these parts, generally, as "liberal" or left of center depending on whatever. I have some dynamic range I like to think.
So, in this Conservation meeting, with me as leading a group stewarding in the National Forest, there was this DEI moment.
We were asked to go around and introduce ouselves as usual. But to add our "pronoun". I really stunk at grammer, but i listened to all the folks saying the he/him/them/her/whyme/ours/yours/us/she/shall/not/beobeyd - types..
Then me. I said my name is Doug. An irritated and senior Sierra Club member got rankled. He was a native American. I am white male. old. He wanted me, insisted even, I state my pronoun.
I said my name is Doug. It's been Doug (then for 65 years. And i will NOT remember pronouns of you folks. I will do best if I recall some of your names.
It was a beginning of which I had no idea what about nail this was gonna be for the conservatives to (in most cased rightly, in some cases very wrongly) pound on with their POV sledgehammers.
I rarely get asked, but when I am asked to state my pronouns I will use "Friend"/The Friend/This Friend".
It confuses people all the time, but if anyone pushes back I point out it is common among Friends to use those as pronouns ("This Friend speaks for me"). If they start to protest further, then I tell them it is from my identity and culture. That quiets them down, because they know I used their code language....
Not just Sierra Club. A friend of mine in DC ran a division of another prominent enviro group and the same thing started happening. As the staff got younger, they lost the thread.
Good morning, everyone. Teengirl and I are signed up to work at the food bank this morning. We'll see how she's feeling: she has a head cold. If she's poorly, I'll go and do the work of two!
1. to start new postcards for grandkids - this week's plan will be Iris Folding, to do some fall leaves, pumpkins & apples, if I can find a small enough apple die to cut out. Iris Folding was the very first paper craft I learned that led me to making many, many greeting cards thru-out the years.
& 2. game of pool, of course. Or we might turn on the projector that has teaching programs projected onto the pool table - very helpful. What's equally wonderful during our pool playing are the discussions that happen, spontaneously... broad range... yesterday, one of several of our discussions was, we wondered how often other couples have spontaneous discussions about random topics??? Anyone care to comment?
Responding to myself - our random brief discussion today was how would we describe our faith to someone who is not at all faithful —- not to make them believe in Jesus & God, just to describe our belief…
Random topics. Whats for lunch? What's for dinner ? "I haven't thought about it" - both of us say. What in's stock (leftover, aging), random creative thinking occurs. We have fresh celery - maybe a tuna salad sandwhich? We have some small creamer potatoes from Costco - delicious things previously made into yummy with Ms. Pinki's creative spicing and of course sour cream
So back to the celery - a key property of which, is when cubed small, adds the "crunch" that is delightful. Add a bit of raw onion crunch and voila - a new potato salad comes about.
We discuss menus on Friday sometime, sitting across from each other on our computers. Because I go grocery shopping early on Saturday morning because that’s when the grocery stores are fully stocked. We plan our whole week of menus. We are very predictable ha ha ha; the same thing for breakfast he eats the same thing for breakfast neither of us eat the same thing as the other for breakfast same thing for lunches neither of us eat the same thing for lunches. however, for dinner, we eat the same thing.
I like/ make French omelet, pancakes. She likes a more firm western omelet.
I make Jalapeño corn bread for her
Both like waffles. Different cereals. I grew up eating cereal sans milk. She convinced me.
Lunches often Different if I'm out
Same dinner 98%. Lotta Mexican based derivative She develops. "Tortilla Delight". Las Palmas Chile sauce. Baked enchiladas. Special flat tostadas. Soups are yummy.
I’ve gotten a lot of compliments on my potato salad. Red potatoes boiled with the skins on. Then diced after they’re cooked, but not too mushy. And then I never ever ever measure squirt in some mayonnaise squirt in some yellow mustard put in a bunch of hard boiled eggs, sweet pickle relish, celery salt that’s the key ingredient, celery salt, some onion salt, and pepper.
I'd pass and go on down the red and white checkered Vinyl table cloth to the next offering.
I love mustard based potato salad. Ms. Pinki not so much. If you didn't tell me Miracle whip, I'm in. Sweet Pickle relish and A1... interesting !! Pass on the sugar... sweetness!
Deviled 🥚 🪺... Love Ms Pinki's. Lotta mustard and stuff.
My husband tries engaging me with his spontaneous thoughts. The other night it was “how long do you think we could survive on raisins and peanuts.” My response “I got nothing.”
It's already holiday crunch time in the church music business. I need to make a bunch of song pages for upcoming performances. Sad to say, of all the people involved in our Spanish music program, I have the best combination of technical skills and not having a day job.
My men’s choir just got drafted to sing for 25 minutes at a church “Christmas Market” thing to raise money for a youth group missions trip. This morning I got starting writing two and three-part arrangements of Christmas songs for the guys.
It doesn’t occur to people that this sort of thing actually takes time and effort. There’s no published music for men for this sort of thing.
We usually have to adjust the key on songs that people want, as well as sorting out rhythms that work for a group. Yes, it takes time and effort. Then you go to practice it and, oops, that didn't work!
Whenever one of the Marianist brothers retired, they picked up immediately 2-4 new assignments. My predecessor in the center, Victor, upon retiring, was asked to be on the board for the local Marianist high schools, be executive director for a retreat center, and run the Marianist living community on campus.
Our former president is nearly 90 and still serves on a boat load of committees, and teaches a class every semester.
One of our guys has excellent tech skills, but he's also a high-up tech something at Bank of America and not able to do a lot of cut-and-tape on a Friday.
Friday, November 14: "If you want to do it, you can do it. The question is, do you want to do it? I always have a comfortable feeling that nothing is impossible if one applies a certain amount of energy in the right direction." — Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, better known as Nellie Bly, who on this day in 1889 completed her round-the-world journey from New York City in 72 days, 6 hours -- beating the fictional Phileas Fogg's 80-day around-the-world record from Jules Verne's novel.
I woke up in a panic the other night, and went onto my favorite import shop and ordered a bunch of pasta. I didn't hard toilet paper during the shutdown, but good pasta is essential.
Looks like a lovely park! and the cheese!
Ever play pinochle?
My wife's parents played it from dinner to breakfast in the Depression on a weekend. We also played long hours together
I'm going to start a nice discussion!!
It's Friday.
a. Where would we all get together for a Picnic day?
b. Name the food(s) you'd bring or cook insight!
c. What games would we play?
d. Would there be a kids table? or not?
e. What would the campfire be like?
Doug sez!
a. A West Virginia state park with a running creek/brook
b. Pinki would make Deviled Eggs and "Bill". Bill is a name she came up with for her unique pastry invention- a special cream cheese filled long baked pastry..
c. RISK !! or Backgammon (I'm pretty good)
d. Not applicable - doggies?
e. Wood. circular. Maybe a shared reading in our own voice and tone of something interesting- ? Edgar Allen Poe? Something with character? A bit of Shakespeare reading? I have a very deep radio-esque voice. a lost calling 😉
I'll come to your park. I'll bring fruit salad. We can play Uno. I'll do a recitation from Kipling.
In scouts we used to have get togethers: My brother would grill bacon wrapped filet mignon over a campfire (mmmmmmm), loads of fixin's with it. We got out rope and entertained people with knot tying. After the meal and clean up we'd play backgammon. We'd roast s'mores over the campfire, also popping popcorn. We'd then share stories about the campfire, trying to induce a laugh or two.
Where did we host this? The Mary Gray Bird Sanctuary outside of Connersville, IN.
Looks fabulous!
a. Where would we all get together for a Picnic day? Devil's Lake State Park
b. Name the food(s) you'd bring or cook insight! Charcuterie board with a nice selection of WI cheese
c. What games would we play? Seven of spades or 10's (group card games)
d. Would there be a kids table? or not? Negative
e. What would the campfire be like? nonexistent we are going home before dark
Back from the food warehouse. Just me: Teengirl stayed home being poorly. It is Thanksgiving Food Drive time for neighborhoods and organizations, and there were massive amounts of donations to sort.
We have a food pantry in Richmond, that our meeting supports. We have one day a month where we volunteer to staff it. I also leave food in multiple "food pantries"; these are anonymous-ish, you leave food, someone takes food. When I go to Wal-Mart, I try to add some food to my shopping, put it in a separate bag, and deliver it.
At our Richmond food pantry, we have lists of what people may receive, and we give them a lot of food. I tried to help them, but there is some parochialism going on. We noticed they needed some work done, and our troop had scouts needing some volunteer hours, but they wouldn't work with us...Sad!
For the past ten years I've mostly taught MBAs. When I taught seniors, I used to give extra credit to students who brought in canned/boxed goods at the end of the school year. They actually enjoyed it! I'd get enough to fill my car trunk with food, which we donated. Although one year a student added a bag or oreos, to see if I'd eat them or not. I did not. I tried to get the faculty who taught in that to continue it, but they thought it was too difficult to do. 🤦♂️
a. Announce it in class
b. bring a printout to class with everyone's name, and highlight the names of those donating food.
c. Add points to the final grades of those students.
It's not rocket science.
Maybe the university's rocket science department would like to have a food drive.
I am encouraged to learn that there are massive amounts of donations, i.e., that people are being responsive to the need.
There is always an enormous amount of food. The challenge is getting it sorted and distributed, especially when perishable items are involved.
A lot of what is coming in now is canned goods, and those have to be sorted into "part of a Thanksgiving meal box" and "not part of a Thanksgiving meal box" and then into individual kinds of items. A lot of work, but everyone is always very pleasant.
I miss the "holiday rush" at the food bank. The food bank had day and night shifts, and it was the first time in my life I could put in a goodly amount of hours during the day helping others. Whoever one worked alongside, we had fun.
I realize it's very sad that such a wealthy country should need busy food banks, but it is a great opportunity for high impact volunteering providing immediate help.
I mailed a check to our metropolitan food bank last week. The Greater Chicago Food Depository has been around since, I want to say the 1980s, and really does a great job. The breakthrough concept that I think they helped popularize back then is that there is much perfectly good surplus food (including fresh food) that does not need to go to waste if there is an organization to manage the logistics of collection from various sources and distribution to the pantries and other programs.
And because they're humans with some common sense, they'll probably do the sorting correctly. It might be risky to leave it up to AI's notion of what does or does not belong in a Thanksgiving meal.
Knowing that one is being a helper, at least for today, is conducive to a good atmosphere, I would think.
There are lists of what goes in a Thanksgiving box. And yes, everyone has a good attitude because they know they're being useful.
https://youtu.be/unfzfe8f9NI?si=W1ck4UGox_S7vFF6
The Official Abba Mamma Mia
Re the mothership, I've been having some interesting exchanges with Member Services. I am encountering a peculiar combination of helpfulness and cluelessness.
I was getting some banners on podcasts and articles informing me that my credit card expires this month and I should update it now. But it doesn't expire this month; it expires in December, and I won't have the updated information until the new card arrives, right? In addition to November charges going through, they should go through in December because credit cards are good through the end of the expiration month.
So I explained this in an e-mail, and received assurance that the web team has been asked to fix their banner. And I responded with thanks and a plug for my wacky notion that information sent out ought to be accurate and that humans should take responsibility.
Got no argument there, but then the young lady asked me (again) if I was successful in updating my information. I had to explain (for the second or third time) that I can't do that until the card arrives, and why I can't do it until the card arrives: because that's how I'll find out the new information.
What is the matter with me? Apparently I am assuming too much in these interactions. What should I be assuming?
Maybe you should be assuming that the young person has been given a script and is not able to deviate from it.
Yeah, that did occur to me. Probably supposed to keep asking me if I did as instructed until I say yes I did. Apparently nothing in the script says what to do with a subscriber's explanation that that is not possible, so they have no choice but to ignore that part of it.
My other hypothesis was that the person is actually an AI bot. I consider that highly unlikely even given The Dispatch's frequent and ongoing reversion to the opposite of their professed business model. But I will be keeping the idea in the back of my mind.
If you're not communicating by telephone, the chance that the responses are automated exists.
I like alfredo sauce with pesto in it. You can buy it that way.
Alfredo sauce is surprisingly easy to make--even I can do it. Grating the hard cheeses is the hardest part.
I watched my sister's MIL--off the boat Italian--make pesto many times. Too bad phones didn't have cameras back then! We all have the recipe my sister wrote down from Nonna, but it isn't the same. Am sure it's the technique and Nonna's love.
Views about retirement
The word retire comes from the French verb se retirer, which means “to withdraw.” The French verb, in turn, is composed of Latin cognates that literally mean “to draw back” or “to pull back.”
When retire came to English in the 1500s, it described soldiers withdrawing from a battlefield to safer ground. Over time, the meaning broadened to include any kind of withdrawal or retreat, including the ideas of retiring to one’s sleeping chamber or retiring from the world, as we see in someone choosing to live a life of seclusion.
The modern sense of the word—withdrawal from one’s occupation or career—didn’t become standard until the early 1800s, when modern working conditions combined with a longer life expectancy to create the need for a word to describe the formal cessation of a lifetime of working.
“Work almost always has a double aspect; it is a bondage, a wearisome drudgery; but it is also a source of interest, a steadying element, a factor that helps to integrate the worker w/ society. Retirement reflects this ambivalence, & it may be looked upons either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap.” -Simone de Beavoir, in the Coming of Age (1970)
Few milestones in life stir up a wider range of emotions than retirement. For day laborers, blue-collar workers, and others who’ve spent a lifetime in physically demanding jobs, the day of retirement is often hard-won and deeply welcomed. In a sad irony, though, the very work that makes retirement so richly deserved also commonly results in battered bodies that are unable to take advantage of new-found leisure time.
For those who’ve enjoyed satisfying and fulfilling careers, but are ready to begin a new chapter of their lives, retirement feels less like an ending than a new beginning—a perfect opportunity to travel, paint, write, teach, volunteer, play bridge, learn a new language, return to an old hobby, take up the piano, play golf or pickleball, act in community theater, hike mountain trails, take long beach walks at sunrise or sunset, or simply live each day without a demanding work schedule calling all the shots. In essence, it’s retirement as creative transition, with decisions about what to do guided by personal interests rather than the demands of a job.
For people who are forced to retire early, either because of corporate downsizing, mandatory retirement policies or—as we see so often with athletes who’ve suffered career-ending injuries—nothing is more dreaded than retirement. When people are expecting to make a graceful transition at some distant point in the future, a forced early retirement can quickly devolve into a personal crisis.
Ernest Hemingway’s famous observation:
“The worst death for anyone is to lose the center of his being, the thing he really is. Retirement is the ugliest word in the language.”
For every person forced to retire early, however, there are many more who continue working even though they’re no longer up to the demands of the job. Sometimes it’s out of financial need, of course, but far more often, it’s because they can’t walk away from something that’s been essential to their identity and happiness
Socioeconomic status is another factor that significantly shapes how retirement is viewed—and ultimately experienced. From this vantage point, the evidence is hard to ignore: the lower one’s economic standing, the greater the anxiety about retirement.
Retirement scares many because there are so few to blame if they don’t enjoy it. — John O. Huston
I really think that it’s better to retire...when you still have some snap left in your garters. — Russell B. Long
As in all successful ventures, the foundation of a good retirement is planning. — Earl Nightingale
Retiring must not mean just vegetating. — Edward Steichen
“Gain all we can, save all we can, and give all we can.” What might that look like in our lives today?
Health permitting, I never plan to retire. I'm having too much fun as it is. If that changes, I could my mind.
As I have stated often, my goal is to die in the classroom: students will never forget that last lecture, even with therapy! 😉
Massive envy. I was forced into retirement by my health, and it was a difficult decade just to not keep looking back as a career I loved. And to stop waking up at 5:30 am.
I feel this !!
Good morning! We have sun!
Those of you with unused 2009 calenders will be delighted to learn that they will work for 2026!
Now that's a fun fact.
great info to pass along!! Thanks!
I chuckled reading this, Jay!
he, & AI, did a great cartoon!!
It really isn't hard, if you give it the correct prompts. 2-3 iterations.
Good morning. 35 degrees with a predicted high of 60. I de-leaved the backyard yesterday, today I plan to get the front yard done, which is a smaller task.
The mothership reports that a provision in the bill ending the shutdown included a provision that closes a loophole allowing intoxicating hemp products, like gummies sold in gas stations, to exist legally, outside of the state level taxes and regulations on medical and/or recreational marijuana. FP’s TGIF is headlining “The Al-Qaeda Commander’s Perfume”.
My wife and I have found Delta 8 (very low THC content) to be unusually effective in pain management and as a sleep aid. My wife is allergic to essentially every pain medication available. At her last knee replacement surgery the only thing that reduced/eliminated her pain was Delta 8. Her surgeon helpfully approved her little bottle, and had the nurses slap an 'approved medication' sticker on it. At the present time it is legal in WV.
On the recommendation of a friend (from church!) I tried Delta 9 for pain management. Boy, that stuff is like a time bomb for me, even one drop. I got rid of it quickly.
My 2 daughters, on the other hand, are heavily into THC. One is in Seattle (kind of goes with the territory) and one is in TX. The one in TX has a PhD in Psychology. She also has lots of strange mushroom literature at her house, which I don't care to peruse.
I take it you do not combust the Delta 8 (which converts it to Delta 9.) You do realize marijuana is not addicting (tongue firmly implanted in my cheek.)
Tincture only.
Even in college I never touched the stuff. I have always been strongly against 'mood altering' substances of all types. My life is plenty interesting, I don't need any help in making it more interesting ;)
I know a thing or two about those hemp products. The hemp gummies can’t give you the psychoactive high like the THC gummies. However, the hemp flower is another story. It’s not psychoactive unless you combust it which converts the THCA to THC. There are percentages on the package like 37.69% THCA which means when you combust it, something like 87% of that percentage is the THC concentration which is hella strong. Every state may as well be legal. This loophole should’ve been closed at the time the farm bill was passed in 2018.
One of my good veterinarian friends, who literally founded the area called "pain management" for animals, has his own growth for ultra low THC. He is a science leader in pain management, well sought out. His lectures on the mechanisms of CBD, are great, insightful. We used his drops for our Gumbi's pain management in his hospice stage
One of my co-author friends has cancer and does THC consumables for the chemo. He actually looks forward to being stoned for two days. He's not as productive for research then, either. But he tells me the thc concentration today is much higher than when he was a kid.
My weathers are supposed to be 69 this afternoon and 70s during the day on the weekend. Interesting info about the marijuana products, and I do miss reading TGIF, at least when Nellie writes it.
The TGIF this week was all over the place. Sometimes the authors are a tad too verbose for me and I can't tell what's sarcasm vs reality.
Neither can the authors tell reality from sarcasm. It's built in fault :)
Nellie’s TGIF is also covering how the Sierra Club chose to go from just environmentalism to social justice, and as a result is “imploding”.
It's an old story about the Sierra Club. The NYT had the major article on this. I also experienced it personally.
Now, I am known in these parts, generally, as "liberal" or left of center depending on whatever. I have some dynamic range I like to think.
So, in this Conservation meeting, with me as leading a group stewarding in the National Forest, there was this DEI moment.
We were asked to go around and introduce ouselves as usual. But to add our "pronoun". I really stunk at grammer, but i listened to all the folks saying the he/him/them/her/whyme/ours/yours/us/she/shall/not/beobeyd - types..
Then me. I said my name is Doug. An irritated and senior Sierra Club member got rankled. He was a native American. I am white male. old. He wanted me, insisted even, I state my pronoun.
I said my name is Doug. It's been Doug (then for 65 years. And i will NOT remember pronouns of you folks. I will do best if I recall some of your names.
It was a beginning of which I had no idea what about nail this was gonna be for the conservatives to (in most cased rightly, in some cases very wrongly) pound on with their POV sledgehammers.
Sigh
I rarely get asked, but when I am asked to state my pronouns I will use "Friend"/The Friend/This Friend".
It confuses people all the time, but if anyone pushes back I point out it is common among Friends to use those as pronouns ("This Friend speaks for me"). If they start to protest further, then I tell them it is from my identity and culture. That quiets them down, because they know I used their code language....
Some of the Spanish Charismatics will address others as, "Cristiano!" and refer to a person as "this Christian".
Am stealing this, if I may.
nice.
Secular me would say in likeness this way -
A person speaks to me. I speak as a person. I am a person. Persons are my identity as I belong to the Persons of humankind
We can address a person by name, by title, or as "you."
"Hi, Doug!" "Mr. Vice President, I would like to speak." "Would you like a cup of coffee?"
We can refer to a person by name or by title. "I gave the book to Doug." "The general decided we would blow that up."
The pronoun thing is unnecessary.
Yeah, the new staffers want to make a mark, and unfortunately, it is in killing off old reputable institutions.
Not just Sierra Club. A friend of mine in DC ran a division of another prominent enviro group and the same thing started happening. As the staff got younger, they lost the thread.
Good. The sooner the Omnicause nonsense goes away, the better it will be for practical environmentalism.
Good morning, everyone. Teengirl and I are signed up to work at the food bank this morning. We'll see how she's feeling: she has a head cold. If she's poorly, I'll go and do the work of two!
Thosr head colds are going around.
Yes, they are.
few things on my agenda today:
1. to start new postcards for grandkids - this week's plan will be Iris Folding, to do some fall leaves, pumpkins & apples, if I can find a small enough apple die to cut out. Iris Folding was the very first paper craft I learned that led me to making many, many greeting cards thru-out the years.
& 2. game of pool, of course. Or we might turn on the projector that has teaching programs projected onto the pool table - very helpful. What's equally wonderful during our pool playing are the discussions that happen, spontaneously... broad range... yesterday, one of several of our discussions was, we wondered how often other couples have spontaneous discussions about random topics??? Anyone care to comment?
Responding to myself - our random brief discussion today was how would we describe our faith to someone who is not at all faithful —- not to make them believe in Jesus & God, just to describe our belief…
Random topics. Whats for lunch? What's for dinner ? "I haven't thought about it" - both of us say. What in's stock (leftover, aging), random creative thinking occurs. We have fresh celery - maybe a tuna salad sandwhich? We have some small creamer potatoes from Costco - delicious things previously made into yummy with Ms. Pinki's creative spicing and of course sour cream
So back to the celery - a key property of which, is when cubed small, adds the "crunch" that is delightful. Add a bit of raw onion crunch and voila - a new potato salad comes about.
We discuss menus on Friday sometime, sitting across from each other on our computers. Because I go grocery shopping early on Saturday morning because that’s when the grocery stores are fully stocked. We plan our whole week of menus. We are very predictable ha ha ha; the same thing for breakfast he eats the same thing for breakfast neither of us eat the same thing as the other for breakfast same thing for lunches neither of us eat the same thing for lunches. however, for dinner, we eat the same thing.
This sounds familiar!
What do you eat the same thing as I do, or do you eat the same thing as he does?
In all probability, both are true!
She likes sweets for breakfast.
We both like bagels, bacon.
I like/ make French omelet, pancakes. She likes a more firm western omelet.
I make Jalapeño corn bread for her
Both like waffles. Different cereals. I grew up eating cereal sans milk. She convinced me.
Lunches often Different if I'm out
Same dinner 98%. Lotta Mexican based derivative She develops. "Tortilla Delight". Las Palmas Chile sauce. Baked enchiladas. Special flat tostadas. Soups are yummy.
My recipe for potato salad
1. Potatoes, boiled and quartered.
2. Honey Dijon mustard (a few squirts)
3. Sweet pickle relish
4. Splenda brown sugar
5. A1 steak sauce
6. Mayo or miracle whip (I don't judge)
(note, the above is also the same as my deviled egg recipe, other than using boiled eggs than potatoes.).
7. crunchies, (diced peppers, onions, celery)
Already copied and printed.
Never used A1 and dying to try that. Have always used Worcesterhire Sauce.
And sprinkle sweet paprika on the top of the finished bowl /deviled eggs-- more for looks than flavor.
I’ve gotten a lot of compliments on my potato salad. Red potatoes boiled with the skins on. Then diced after they’re cooked, but not too mushy. And then I never ever ever measure squirt in some mayonnaise squirt in some yellow mustard put in a bunch of hard boiled eggs, sweet pickle relish, celery salt that’s the key ingredient, celery salt, some onion salt, and pepper.
I'd pass and go on down the red and white checkered Vinyl table cloth to the next offering.
I love mustard based potato salad. Ms. Pinki not so much. If you didn't tell me Miracle whip, I'm in. Sweet Pickle relish and A1... interesting !! Pass on the sugar... sweetness!
Deviled 🥚 🪺... Love Ms Pinki's. Lotta mustard and stuff.
so so so many varieties of deviled eggs… I.e. crab and deviled eggs yes
My husband tries engaging me with his spontaneous thoughts. The other night it was “how long do you think we could survive on raisins and peanuts.” My response “I got nothing.”
trail mix is pretty good...
My husband and I usually talk about daily life topics rather than random ones, but our daily life includes some pretty weird stuff ...
It's already holiday crunch time in the church music business. I need to make a bunch of song pages for upcoming performances. Sad to say, of all the people involved in our Spanish music program, I have the best combination of technical skills and not having a day job.
My men’s choir just got drafted to sing for 25 minutes at a church “Christmas Market” thing to raise money for a youth group missions trip. This morning I got starting writing two and three-part arrangements of Christmas songs for the guys.
It doesn’t occur to people that this sort of thing actually takes time and effort. There’s no published music for men for this sort of thing.
We usually have to adjust the key on songs that people want, as well as sorting out rhythms that work for a group. Yes, it takes time and effort. Then you go to practice it and, oops, that didn't work!
Whenever one of the Marianist brothers retired, they picked up immediately 2-4 new assignments. My predecessor in the center, Victor, upon retiring, was asked to be on the board for the local Marianist high schools, be executive director for a retreat center, and run the Marianist living community on campus.
Our former president is nearly 90 and still serves on a boat load of committees, and teaches a class every semester.
One of our guys has excellent tech skills, but he's also a high-up tech something at Bank of America and not able to do a lot of cut-and-tape on a Friday.
I'll reply here to say, this brings up possibly another subject for comments? I'll put at the top about retirement...
Friday, November 14: "If you want to do it, you can do it. The question is, do you want to do it? I always have a comfortable feeling that nothing is impossible if one applies a certain amount of energy in the right direction." — Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, better known as Nellie Bly, who on this day in 1889 completed her round-the-world journey from New York City in 72 days, 6 hours -- beating the fictional Phileas Fogg's 80-day around-the-world record from Jules Verne's novel.
so, what "do you want to do"
Nellie Bly was also the name of a Stephen Collins Foster song. It had a nice melody to it.
[Chorus]
Heigh! Nelly, Ho! Nelly
Listen lub to me
I’ll sing for you, play for you
A dulcem melody
[Verse 2]
Nelly Bly hab a voice
Like de turtle dove
I hears it in de meadow
And I hears it in de grove
Nelly Bly hab a heart
Warm as cup of tea
And bigger dan de sweet potato
Down in Tennessee.
IDK 'bout you but maybe I should try that last compliment on Katie; she likes sweet potatoes! 😀
great to read along as I listened to the link Cynthia provided. As she said, lively. Nice
And baked sweet potatoes w/ butter are marvelous!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqdCf692CCA&list=RDyqdCf692CCA&start_radio=1
It's a lively song.
Michael Palin did a travel program of "Around the World in 80 Days". We have it on DVD along with some of the others like Himalaya and "Pole to Pole".
interesting - I'll look for it! Thanks
Several of the video series also have a book, so try your local library.
& the best Italian pasta is less processed, fewer additives, thus more nutritious...
hey, this is when Kennedy needs to have a word!
I woke up in a panic the other night, and went onto my favorite import shop and ordered a bunch of pasta. I didn't hard toilet paper during the shutdown, but good pasta is essential.
EARWORM: Texan Claire Hinkle’s songs are mainly rock. But the sultry, smooth “Don’t Ask Questions” is a different kind of tune (video, 3:51):
https://youtu.be/ylxhJWRcljM?si=PucCZqF9pwvcpBXu
Boy, that is really good! Guitar nerd observation: You rarely see (and I'm not sure I have seen) TWO left-handed guitarists in the same band.
I didn't notice. I usually catch it when I see one facing the "wrong" way. Cool!
Oh my! She hit the spot this morning. Thanks!
You're most welcome.
Excellent performance.
nice!