Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Art’ Category

Learning to Be More Gracious

Posted in aging, Art, Journeys, Writing, tagged , , , , on June 9, 2024| 3 Comments »

Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

On March 31, three days after I suffered a heart attack, the entry in my journal reads Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! The words were written by my granddaughter Shanna because I was hooked up to medical paraphernalia. As an afterthought, she noted that I was in Room 516 at Tucson Medical Center. And I should note that just 11 days earlier, I had a total knee replacement.

The next entry in my journal wasn’t made until May 14, when I recorded a quote from North Woods, the book by Daniel Mason that I was reading at the time. The quote, “Love made the old do the same dumb things as the young.” The words hit home with me because of having seen – and done – just that behavior during my 85-year journey through life.

The next thoughts, which went through my little gray cells after once again posting in my journal, was that not writing about the bad and scary after-effects of my heart attack was a familiar pattern. The many journals that I have kept for over 50 years contain mostly pleasant thoughts and good times.

To my way of thinking, this behavior isn’t altogether wrong, well except for a couple of times in my life when I needed to actually accept a bad situation and move on from it. One of those times was a lengthy period in the late 1970s when the door of the skeleton closet, in which I had shoved over 20 years of unpleasant happenings, burst open.

It took me a year to live through that episode before coming out a happier, more fulfilled person, one ready to grab all the gusto life had to offer, but also fiercely independent believing I didn’t need anyone to take care of me but me. This false notion was flung into the garbage bin when I recently learned that my granddaughter Shanna and her wife Dawn, who live next door to me and who were there for me during my knee replacement and three heart surgeries, were keeping their phones on at night in case of an emergency call from me.

Shit, shit, shit. I cried for three days before finally accepting that I should be more grateful for their love and care then being upset that I wasn’t living up to my own independent expectations.        

So why am I writing about this. Well, it’s just what writers do — and because the focus of my recent blogs has been about aging – and that’s what I’m currently doing. While I’ve always felt blessed that Shanna and Dawn were nearby, graciously accepting their help, and that of others, hasn’t been easy for me.

But I’m learning.

Meanwhile, my life is still good, and I’m going to focus on that – and be grateful for all the good things my journals have recorded.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

Read Full Post »

Sunshine and Rain

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Journeys, Writing on May 20, 2024| 3 Comments »

The saguaro are currently blooming in Tucson, thanks to the rain and sun we’ve enjoyed this spring. — Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

When you’re 85, and if you’re lucky, your head is full of memories, and you never know when one of them is going to pop up. Like this morning when I was reading a post by Anne Lamott, one of my favorite writing-advice authors.

She was talking about taking a walk with an old friend and mentioned that they were wearing raincoats because although it was sunny, it was drizzling off and on. “In my family, we always announced during a sun shower that it must be a monkey’s birthday somewhere,” she wrote.

Her family was more positive than mine, because on reading those words I clearly heard my Southern grandmother say that if it were raining and the sun was shining, then the devil must be beating his wife.

Another saying for a day when the sun is shining through the rain, wrote Lamott, is that it’s a day when the foxes are having a wedding.

 A bit of research turned out there were even more old sayings for such a day, including a witch making butter in Poland and day for a parish fair in Germany. And in the Appalachians in this country, the locals might also say that the devil is kissing his wife.

Now I have even more memories stuffed into this old brain of mine. I’m just glad to be remembering some of them.     

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

Read Full Post »

Dung Beetles vs. Silver Linings

Posted in aging, Art, Journeys, tagged , on May 3, 2024| 2 Comments »

Dung beetles enrich the soil so plants can flourish. Did you know that? — Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

One of my favorite bloggers, Dawn Downey, (https://dawndowney.substack.com/) claimed silver linings clash with her complexion and in the next instant, she said, dung beetles were her gurus.

Since silver linings are my mantra, you would suppose that I would be a bit upset with Dawn. But you would be wrong. Dawn gave me another perspective to ponder – and I learned a lot about dung beetles while doing it. Because she sparked my interest, I did an internet search to discover more about dung beetles, and discovered they actually are amazing creatures.

I mean, did you know that nocturnal African dung beetles can navigate and orient themselves using the Milky Way? And that some dung beetles can pull over 1,000 times their own weight.

Long ago, I wisely came to the conclusion that one learns more from those who think differently from me than those who agree with me. That mind set has stood me well, and often pushed me to better paths in life than what I was taught as a child growing up in the South during the 1940s and’50s.

For one thing, it’s not in the best interest of women to stay barefoot and pregnant. And just because you were born in Texas doesn’t mean you’re better than those who weren’t. That, at least was, my grandmother’s way of thinking.

I learned many other things during my journey through life that make me thankful for having diversity in my friends and acquaintances, and I hope they can say the same about me. I’ve also learned even more from other writers, like Dawn. The ability to read is an awesome gift.

Even so, I’ll continue to believe in silver linings — because one doesn’t have to agree with, or believe, everything they hear or read.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

Read Full Post »

The Dance of Life

Posted in aging, Art, Journeys, Writing, tagged on February 20, 2024| 7 Comments »

Aging My Way

“We should consider every day lost in which we have not danced at least once,” said Fredrick Nietzsche, an 1800s’ German philosopher.  

Dancing, for a couple of years in my life, once gave me great joy. I did it most Wednesday nights when country swing was my jig of choice. Mostly I danced with a 6-foot-4 partner who was the boyfriend of one of my girlfriends who hated dancing.

He and I got pretty good at it and I continued to enjoy it even after he accidentally gave me a black-eye while we were doing a maneuver called The Octopus.

And that vivid memory was the first thought that popped through my mind when I read Nietzsche’s words.

However, since Nietzsche wasn’t a dancer, I can only assume he was talking more philosophically, like having something in your life that gives you daily joy. 

I appreciate that deduction, since these days I can’t quite dance. My left knee — soon to be replaced, I note, which leaves me both happy and a bit scared – is quite wonky. And I doubt, even if after fixed, it’s going to let me dance with the ease I did in my younger days.

But I do have daily joy in my life. My canine companion Scamp, friends and loved ones who drop by or call, books, letters, birds that visit my small yard, sunshine, flowers, the satisfaction of completing a piece of art, or even just having a clean apartment polished up by my own hands,

These are all little things that have long been in my life, but which I didn’t always appreciate as much as I do now. I find having the time to do so now is one of the better gifts of aging.

So what if I can no longer dance? My cup is not just half full, it’s overflowing. Thanks, Fredrich. For reminding me.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

          .

Read Full Post »

I Simply Can’t Make Up My Mind

Posted in aging, Art, Journeys, Writing on February 16, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Are you sure we’re going the right way? — Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

Women just can’t make up their minds. That’s a comment I heard often, especially in my younger years. It was never meant as a compliment.

Age, however, has taught me that having the ability to change one’s mind, to make a U-turn, even if it’s in the middle of rush-hour traffic, is actually a strength.

I mean, we’re all human, men and women alike. And though there are some out there who think otherwise, none of us are perfect. I would hate to even start to count up the number of mistakes I’ve made in my 84 years. But I’ve learned that nothing stops me from changing direction when I do.

It’s actually a lesson that began filtering into my brain when I was about three years old, and innocent enough that I actually ate a spoonful of dirt at the urging of some older kids who were teasing me. They pretended to eat the dirt while telling me it was yummy. All I can recall of that incident, which is one of my first memories, is that I didn’t take a second bite.

Even so, I was almost 40 before I accepted that it’s not a weakness to change one’s mind.  Since then, my life has been better – and oh so much easier because I no longer fear making a wrong decision.

After all. I’m a woman. And everyone knows, we women simply can’t make up our minds.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

Read Full Post »

Watching TV Again, But Still Reading

Posted in aging, Art, Books, Journeys on February 9, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Illustration by Pat Bean

Aging my Way

When I retired in 2004 and moved into a 21-foot RV, I got rid of my TV. It wasn’t a big deal. I had many other things to do. Even nine years later, when I left my wheeled home for a regular apartment, I saw no need to make a television a part of my furnishings.  

But in January of 2023, my brother, an avid Dallas Cowboy fan, visited and wanted to watch a football game. My granddaughter and her wife, who had bought a new television for Christmas – and had been trying to give me their old one for a month – brought it over so he could watch the game.

It was supposed to go back to their apartment afterwards but for one reason or another, it didn’t. It sat on a bookcase for nearly a year, where the only comfortable place for watching it was from a prone position on my couch. I mostly watched it for my kind of soap operas, The Challenge, Survivor and Amazing Race, which when without a TV, I streamed on my computer.

But a few weeks ago, the girls came over and moved all my furniture around so they could sit comfortably on the couch and watch football game or a movie with me. And they moved my big old comfortable recliner into a prime viewing position.

I now watch TV more, which has me pondering if this is a bad or a good thing. I ponder a lot.

This week I’ve been binging on Call the Midwife, which usually ends each episode on a bright note even if life has been difficult for the characters.  I’m a realist but I believe in silver lining endings.

Watching TV again has been pleasurable, but thankfully art and books still call to me. I just finished reading Bright Remarkable Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt, which I highly recommend, as I do Call the Midwife.

Both kept this old broad up well after her bedtime. That’s OK. It makes me feel younger.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

Read Full Post »

Old Broad Pondering About Diapers

Posted in aging, Art, Journeys, Writing on January 19, 2024| 4 Comments »

We don’t have snow, but it’s been cold here in Tucson. — Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

If I were to think about some of the important milestones in my life, I could start with an incident that happened during the early 1940s, when as a young child, I destroyed the family’s ration stamps. Issued by the government during World War II, the stamps allowed families limited purchase of such items as sugar, gas and meat.

The incident is not something I actually remember doing, but the story was told to me numerous times growing up. That I survived this family trauma has to mean something.

But not nearly as much as the milestone that I now look back on in disbelief. I survived raising five children at a time when disposable diapers were not easily available. And because the first four of my children were close in age, I once had seven years of uninterrupted cloth diaper changes.

Somehow, today, that seems as much of a milestone as giving birth to those five children. Perhaps it’s because after changing a few of my grandchildren and great-grandchildren’s diapers, I came to the conclusion that disposable diapers might be one of the world’s best inventions.

I think my next milestone, which happened when those five kids ranged in age from two to 11, was going to work for a newspaper, and getting promoted from darkroom flunky to reporter. It changed the entire direction of my life and gave me a career I loved for the next 37 years.

Looking back now, I feel that was the life I was meant to live, and I can’t help but wonder if fate played a hand in letting me find it. What would my life have been like if I hadn’t answered that newspaper ad?  Or, if at 25, I hadn’t decided I wanted to be a writer?

As I sit here reflecting on these things, I realize how very thankful I am for the life I’ve had. But I also wonder how different things could have turned out, especially since all the milestones – and wrong decisions — I’ve survived in my life were not all that great.

There were a few experiences I wouldn’t regret having skipped. But then I wonder if I hadn’t experienced them, would my life have turned out for the better – or the worse?

Who knows? Certainly not me. I guess pondering about disposable diapers, and where your thoughts go from there, is just something you do when you’re an old broad.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

Read Full Post »

Here’s What I Know

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Journeys, silver linings, Writing on January 17, 2024| 4 Comments »

Yellow-Rumped Warbler

Aging My Way

 When things got tough in my younger years, I did what most of us do. I struggled on. Then, during one of the rougher patches, I came to an amazing discovery. Despite all the chaos that was happening around and to me, there was still a deep happiness inside me that had nothing to do with my present world.

 Ever since that day, I’ve felt blessed. And as I thought about it this morning, I realized that if I ever needed that flaming spark of inner light to keep going, it is now.

 While all the drama and craziness that’s been in my past life has faded away, I’ve found myself in a new kind of shit. Sorry if that word offends, but I can’t think of a better description to sum up what’s happening to my body after 84 years of living in it.

  Bum knee, bum shoulder, thinning skin, thinning hair, sagging boobs, actually sagging everything. Yet, I still greet each morning with zest, and with thankfulness that I’ve made it this far in life, and also for the benefits of aging.    

 No longer are little things a matter of life or death, I have more time to read and learn, and stillness in my life for reflection. I finally realize my worth and that I am loved, two things that escaped my desperate search for them when I was younger.

 But best of all, I’m learning to live in the moment. I enjoy each bird that visits my yard, each hug from friends and loved ones, each cuddle with my dog Scamp, and every sunrise, which is visible from my warm, cozy bed on a cold Tucson morning like today.

I’m just thankful to still be alive. This I know.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

Read Full Post »

That’s Not What I Meant

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Journeys, Writing, tagged on January 9, 2024| 4 Comments »

Some hummingbirds can flap their wings up to 80 times a second. — Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

With all this talk being thrown around about artificial intelligence, better known simply as AI, I’ve come to realize one of its uses has been both the savior and bane of my life for 40 years or more. I’m talking about Spell Check.

In the early years, it simply noted misspelled words; today it goes so far as to question context and meaning of words. I like it when it catches my typo gremlins, but not when it automatically changes a word I truly meant, sometimes even refusing to let me change it back.

This mostly happens when I text — and the most frequent irritation is when Spell Check changes Dawn to David. And just yesterday, I typed that I was back safely after taking my dog Scamp for a walk and that he had pooed.  AI didn’t like pooed, so changed it to posed.

In 2020, Google wrote of its Spell Check Program: “The tool uses a deep neural net with 680 million parameters to better understand the context of misspelled words. It runs in 3 milliseconds — faster than one flap of a hummingbird’s wings.”

Now I don’t understand some of that, but I do know that some hummingbirds flap their wings 80 times a second. Then again, I don’t understand how that is possible either.

In my imagination, I see Spell Check and Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, coming head-to-head in a face-off.

Carroll, whose work was published in the 1800s, used such meaningless words as brillig, frumious, slythy, mimsy, burble, chortle, galumph, snark, frabjous, and burble – and meant them. Some of those words can now be found in dictionaries, like Jabberwocky, the name of a nonsensical poem by Carrol. Today, Jabberwocky, according to an Oxford Dictionary, means invented or meaningless language.

Will Spell Check block the creation of new words from joining our language – or will there be another author like Carroll to fight and win the head-to-head battle against the mighty AI tool?

This curious writer wants to know. Otherwise, I just want Spell Check to continue catching my typo gremlins, but to acknowledge I meant what I said.

That’s not asking too much. Is it?

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

Read Full Post »

Only 135 miles to a McDonald’s

Posted in aging, Art, Journeys, Nature, Writing, tagged , on January 5, 2024| 2 Comments »

Yellow and Purple — Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

Did you know that if you live in the United States’ lower mainland, you’re never more than 135 miles from a McDonald’s. At least that’s what an Atlas Obscura article I read claimed.

Then with a pun for emphasis, the article said the “McFarthest” spot away from one of the fast-food restaurants was located in Nevada. The article then provided the GPS coordinates, with an added note to respect property rights if you decide to go.

Between 1956 and 1970, I lived in Lake Jackson, a small city on the Texas Gulf Coast that was founded in 1942, just two years after the first McDonald’s was opened in 1940. I often heard people, maybe even myself once or twice, decry that the city didn’t have a McDonalds. Well, Lake Jackson has grown substantially over the years, and now has more than one McDonald’s.

But since my way of thinking has changed much over the past 50 plus years, I’m not all together happy about that. I’ve become a big fan of wilderness areas, even if it’s just a place designated as wildlife habitat.

While some humans think we’re the only species that counts. I think differently. Besides, being able to just be surrounded by Mother Nature’s wonders every once in a while, is what has kept me sane all these years. Even as a kid, I treasured being hidden among the leaves up a tree. And when I saw my first mountain, I was hooked for life.  

During my 37-year newspaper journalism career, I was always looking for stories that would take me into undeveloped areas. I wrote about the return of wolves to Yellowstone, the polarized issues of Southern Utah wilderness areas, the creation of The Grand Staircase-Escalante Monument, Forest Service land swaps, troubling issues involving Great Salt Lake, and many other environmental issues.

The newspaper’s photographers even created a catch-phrase about me. “If you find yourself driving on an unpaved road, it must be a Pat Bean assignment.”

I miss those days. But I can’t imagine ever missing a McDonald’s.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »