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Words for Today from the Past

Posted in aging, Art, Journeys, tagged Barbara Jordan on November 4, 2021| 8 Comments »

This painting is nothing more than blobs of color, but they come together to make a whole that is pleasing. This watercolor was also painted by two different people. Is there a lesson here? — Art by Pat Bean and Jean Gowen

An Unlikely Hero

“A nation is formed by the willingness of each of us to share in the responsibility for upholding the common good.”

“One thing is clear to me: We, as human beings, must be willing to accept people who are different from ourselves.”

“What the people want is very simple – they want an America as good as its promise.”

“The imperative is to define what is right and do it.”

“Let each person do his or her part. If one citizen is unwilling to participate, all of us are going to suffer. For the American idea, though it is shared by all of us, is realized in each one of us.”

“Think what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down on our blankets for a nap.”

While doing some research for a story, I came across the above quotes. They touched my heart, and had me asking why aren’t our leaders saying these kinds of things today.

If you hadn’t already guessed, these words came from a tall, outspoken, husky-voiced Black women from Texas, Barbara Jordan, whom I was privileged to write about in my early journalism years. She was from Houston, and I worked for a newspaper just 50 miles away.

Barbara (1936-1996) was the first Black woman to be elected to the Texas State Senate, and in 1972, she became the first Black woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

She served three terms before retiring to become a professor at the University of Texas. While Jordan’s quotes from above touched me, this one chilled me to the bone: “But this is the great danger America faces. That we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual. Each seeking to satisfy private wants.”

I think she perfectly described America as it is today, and it deeply saddens me. What do you think?

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.

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Then Being Then

Posted in aging, Art, Books, Journeys, tagged Hell and Other Destinations, Madelaine Albright, Me Too, working mothers on November 3, 2021| 8 Comments »

I never felt like a fish out of water when I was in a newsroom, but there were many times I felt like I was alone in a fish bowl with everyone keeping an eye on me simply because I was often a woman doing a man’s job. — Art by Pat Bean

A Shared Past

I’m listening to Madelaine Albright’s latest book, Hell and Other Destinations: A 21^st Century Memoir, which she reads herself. As I read, I find myself greatly identifying with the author because of our shared years of experiences. She’s 84 and I’m 82.

Although I never reached the fame Madelaine did, we were both working mothers during a time when that was looked down upon; we both survived working with men before the Me Too Movement; and we both side-stepped inappropriate work-involved situations so as not to hurt our chances of advancing in our jobs.

Madelaine, I thought, summed it all up with her comment after an incident involving a male chauvinistic quip while she was seeking campaign funding during a Dollars for Democrats fund drive. One man told her he had “No money for Democrats, but five dollars for you babe.”

“Then being then,” she said, she chose to simply ignore the comment and move on with her task. It made me remember the many times something similar happened to me and I, too, ignored it.

Madelaine and I also both lived through a time of female firsts, like the first woman to become a Fortune 500 CEO, the first woman to drive in the Indy 500, the first woman on the Supreme Court, and on and on. As a working journalist when these events and many others on lesser scales happened, I wrote newspaper stories about the achievements – to the point I never wanted to do another first woman story in my life.

On my own personal level, I was the first woman to infiltrate several, all male newspaper editorial decision-making meetings. I quickly learned that the first words out of one of the men’s mouths would be: “OK guys. We have a lady present. We have to watch our language.”

Translated, I understood that to mean she can’t handle our world, and considered it a big put down.

While I’m not exactly fast on the uptake, I think I got this one right for then being then. I, who never cussed, followed the man’s comments with my own. “That’s right. You mother #@&*%#* sons of a #@^%&* just better watch your language.” That got a laugh, and the point across that I could handle just as much as the men could.

And that’s kind of how I handled most of my career. While I one hundred and ten percent supported the equal rights movement back then, I never talked about it at work, or complained when I wasn’t treated equally, (well, except for equal pay for equal work) because I saw that feminist-talking women were thought uppity and the Good Old Boys Club – why in the hell isn’t there a Good Old Girls Club frustrates me — edged those women out of advancement. I saw it time and time again. Meanwhile I stood by feeling helpless … Because, as Madelaine said, “Then being then.”

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Landscapes, Lifestyles and Writing

Posted in aging, Birds, Books, Journeys, tagged Amy Hale Auker, Apartment living on November 2, 2021| 3 Comments »

These tiny purple flowers grow all around my apartment complex. I try to always take the time to stop and enjoy them. — Photo by Pat Bean

I just started reading Ordinary Skin: Essays from Willow Springs by Amy Hale Auker, and it touched my soul before I had even finished the first page. Amy talks about imagining her wings and fins and claws and then catching the light of the day and snuggling back into her ordinary skin.

I read books for many reasons: To learn new things, to escape to new worlds, to discover that others can feel as much of an outcast as I have most of my life, to share experiences, and to be inspired to live better and write better.

Amy’s book is a series of essays inspired by her life on Spider Ranch, which covers a sprawling 72 square miles of Central Arizona landscape whose elevation ranges from 3,400 feet to 6,100 feet. It is full of canyons, bears, cactus and cactus wrens.

It’s about a woman finding its beauty and her place in this landscape, just as it was in her first book of essays, Rightful Place. That book’s setting was the Texas Panhandle’s Llano Estacada.

Books like these, and the many others I’ve read that involve wild, rural and isolated lands as inspiration, inspire me to write my own essays about finding my own place in the landscape, like I sort of did in my book Travels with Maggie.

But instead of living on a sprawling ranch today, I live in a large apartment complex. Thankfully, its located in the shadow of the Catalina Mountains, is surrounded on one side by a tiny bit of undeveloped desert, and has three landscaped courtyards where flowers grow, and giant Ponderosas, Russian Olive, tall Palms and other trees provide shade for the Sonoran Deserts’ blazing hot summers.

Living alone provides me with all the solitude I need, and daily walking my canine companion, who wants to say Hello! Please scratch my ears! to everyone he meets, fills my need for human interaction.

Hummingbirds daily dance around my two third-floor balconies, a pair of Great Horned Owls serenade my evenings with their hoos, while coyotes sometimes howl in harmony. As an old broad who has had her fill of yard work and owning homes that had to be maintained, apartment living suits me.

Life is good. Especially since I have books to let me imagine different landscapes and lifestyles.

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Keeping Busy With Birds

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Journeys, tagged Atlas Obscura, Drawing on October 8, 2021| 1 Comment »

***A bit messy but I never would have tried this Black-Capped Chickadee post without taking the art class.***

I took a bird history/drawing Atlas Obscura Zoom class yesterday afternoon. The instructor noted that birds evidently had a lot of fans, judging by the number of participants who signed up for the short course.

She’s right. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Survey, 51.3 million Americans watch birds, and the hobby is the fastest-growing outdoor activity in this country.

I became one of the addicted in 1999. And my life has been richer because of it. My latest way to watch birds, given that Covid’s isolated me from taking field trips with other birders, are live bird cams. Check out explore.org if you are interested.

This morning I watched a bald eagle sitting on a snow-filled nest near Decorah, Iowa, a blue-gray tanager at a Panama fruit feeder, and puffins in a burrow off the coast of Maine. I especially like watching the fruit feeder because I personally have to identify the birds that visit it, which often involves an extra bit of research.

I’ve kept a life list of birds I’ve seen personally in the field for 22 years now – 700 plus different species. The list grew rapidly in my early years of birding, but now grows only by one or two birds a year, if I’m lucky.

So, I’ve started a second list of virtual birds. The criteria for this list include a good visual observation, location of the bird, and a bit of research about any bird I list. My impossible goal is that the list will eventually grow to 10,000 bird species, which is almost as many birds as there are on this planet.

As an avid list maker, and an old broad who is retired, it’s an ideal activity, as is drawing birds. It was a fun class that began with the instructor noting birds evolved from dinosaurs. I already knew that. Did you?

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Reminders to Live Fully

Posted in aging, Journeys on October 6, 2021| 8 Comments »

*And always remember to take time to smiell the flowers. —* Art by Pat Bean

Life is too short.

Play with your dog. Eat that extra piece of chocolate pie without guilt. Don’t hold grudges. Walk in the rain. Don’t put off exploring your own backyard. Take that day trip to Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge that has been on your things-to-do list for months.

Stop procrastinating about writing your memoir. Laugh at yourself often. Accept that you’re old and that the mirror tells the truth – you’re not looking for a lover so who else would care?

Speak your mind more, but remember to be kind. Don’t take your friends, or your family, for granted. Write more snail-mail letters. Stay awake until 4 a.m. listening to that great book you’re enjoying. Simply sit for a while and watch hummingbirds flit around a nectar feeder.

Buy a new pair of shoes and throw the old ones away. Stop censoring your own journal. Paint a picture of a rainbow, or a bluebird, or the flower that’s blooming outside your window. Cook a special meal. Sit under a tree and read a book. Learn something new.

And always remember to be thankful for being the CEO of your own wonderful life.

Just a few reminders when one’s years ahead are shorter than the years behind.

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Chameleon Traits: Strength or Weakness

Posted in aging, Journeys, tagged Story Circle Network, weaknesses and strengths, writing prompts on October 4, 2021| 3 Comments »

***Is being a chameleon a strength or weakness, I was asked.***

How is your greatest strength also your greatest weakness?

This question is the October writing prompt from my Story Circle Network writing circle, which I’ve been a member of now for over ten years. Every writer should belong to just such a supportive group, and I feel blessed to have found mine.

As to the prompt, I immediately thought of one of my traits that for most of my life I thought of as a weakness, but in recent years have concluded is actually a strength.

I consider myself to be a chameleon because I have no problems fitting in with many types of people and groups. I, almost instinctively, can adjust my actions and speech so that I fit in. It’s as if I’m many persons. While I don’t verbally agree with things I don’t believe in, I work at not making statements that will give offense.

That’s not to say it always works. While it does keep disagreements and controversies to a minimum, I’ve become known as the dolt who suffers from foot-in-the-mouth disease. Sometimes it leads to hard feelings toward me from someone I dearly love. And then my attempted explanations usually make things even worse.

The truth is, especially in the earlier days of my life, being a chameleon was all I was. I envied people who knew who they were and stood up for things they believed in. My problem, or so I thought, was that I never seemed to have those same strong feelings about one issue or another.

I could see the point of view of those who took a hard stance on an issue, but just as easily I could also see the point of view of those who took an opposite hard stance. No issue ever seemed to be black and white. I thought this made me a weak person.

At some point, as a working journalist, I came to understand this chameleon attitude served me well. I always kept both sides of a polarized issue talking to me because I didn’t slant my newspaper stories one way or the other. I stuck to the facts only and fairly represented both sides equally – because I usually could see both sides, especially involving the issues I wrote about as an environmental reporter.

It took me much longer to see my chameleon qualities with friends and family as a strength — and not until I accepted myself and actually found a few issues on which I couldn’t back away from, even if they offended someone. It took me a long time but I finally came to know who I am, and that includes being a person with chameleon traits.

And those traits are an asset because they give me easy access to many different kinds of people and situations that broaden my horizons. Being a chameleon means I’m not stuck in only one mind set.

So, what are your greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses?

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Old Age is Not for Sissies

Posted in aging, Art, Journeys, tagged exercise on September 10, 2021| 6 Comments »

When I young, too many years ago, I would occasionally hear one well-matured person or another comment “old age is not for sissies.” I heard it more often as my own mother struggled to retain her independence.

These days I find myself muttering the same words, and also those of Dylan Thomas who wrote: Do not go gentle into that good night, old age should burn and rave at close of day; rage, rage at the dying of the light.

I’ve worked hard at keeping my brain sharp and up-to-date with what’s going on in the world today. And I joke that my third-floor apartment. with no elevator, and a dog to walk five times a day, are my fool-proof exercise plans.

That’s all good, but my recent inability to take a small step down on uneven ground, because I was afraid I would lose my balance and fall, had nothing to do with stairs or walking.

“Try Tai Chi,” my former journalism colleague Charlie Trentelman, told me.

So, I ordered a digital video copy of Tai Chi lessons that focuses on balance for older people. I participated in the first class this morning.

In it, we beginners got to hold on to a chair, or even sit in it for some exercises. Piece of cake, I thought, as the demonstrations began. Ha! I had to sit out a couple of the exercises because I pooped out. I was straining muscles I didn’t even know I had.

And when it came to the point in the video where the instructor said we could end our first lesson here if we were tired, or continue on, I opted to halt the video.

I’ll try again tomorrow. I’m not a sissy.

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