It’s curious when one becomes the subject of one’s academic endeavors. I became involved with the Center on Aging at the University of Texas Medical Branch when it was first created in the late 1980’s and did an internship experience in 1990. I was then in my 40’s and felt quite distant from the population I was studying.
Now, in my 70’s I have joined Pogo who said, “He is us.”
Aging does bring changes. Short term memory becomes an issue. Passing thoughts that used to stick in my mind, now slip away easily. It is necessary to focus on passing thoughts to attach them in my mind and I find the calendar and notepad apps on my phone to be essential tools. Strength and balance are other issues. My horse riding activities pointed up how long it took me to develop the strength and balance necessary to participate in dressage competitions.
I recently was asked to contribute an article for the Summer Horse Show Series Supplement in the Dripping Springs Century-News. In the article (click on the link below) I go deeper into the challenges presented by the passage of time.
Riding in Competition (May 2018)
Reference
Humor in America, The Morphology of a Humorous Phrase: “We have met the enemy and he is us”
As Texas and Oklahoma recover from the dramatic rainfall last week brought, I began to research ways in which seniors could be better prepared for future disaster. The Red Cross had a simple three step approach to preparedness that I found to be helpful.
Yesterday, I turned 70 years of age.
When I was in elementary school, we were only occasionally allowed in the library, could only take out a book or two and were threatened with dire consequences if we damaged or lost them. I remember that some books were very popular and we all waited for our turn to read them. One was a book about Homer Price by Robert McCloskey and the others were science fiction stories by Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988).
In the 1970’s, I worked on a project to introduce health science students to rural health care systems and issues. We would take teams of students to rural communities in Kentucky and the most memorable towns were in the Appalachian mountains. Health care here was scattered and sparse but local home health nurses and Miners Memorial Hospitals tried to fill the gaps. These hospitals (called the Appalachian Regional Hospitals when I was there) were the heart and soul of the rural communities where they were located.
The good old Austin American Statesman comes through again with a great story on aging. This week it’s teeny, tiny telescopes implanted in eyes affected* with Macular Degeneration.
In the fictional town of Cicely, Alaska, the local radio station, KBHR, keeps the scattered residents informed of local events and emergencies. The morning host, Chris Stevens, mixes classical philosophy and erudite quotes with local news, and everyone in town pays close attention via their radios.
My wife has been a student of genealogy for many years. Originally she learned how to find government archives and write off to them for copies of records and spent days in the special genecology library in Houston. After much work she discovered that she had an ancestor who was at the battle of San Jacinto and found his name engraved on the monument at the battlefield site. She has drug me to far flung meadows at the end of dirt roads where live ancient graveyards where she found a relative’s name chiseled on a weather worn stone. The activity combines scholarly research with detective work.
What does this have to do with aging? It all ties back to a remarkable book by William Manchester called A World Lit Only By Fire (1). Manchester’s book has been criticized (quite rightly, I might add) for numerous errors of fact and interpretation (2, 3), however he draws a compelling portrait between human periods of ignorance and enlightenment. The value of this book lies in this overall point: Western civilization has moved from periods of immobility to periods of mobility (and probably back to immobility and so on in an endless cycle).
Rodger Marion 