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Laughter is Good for an Old Body

Posted in aging, journalism, Journeys, tagged laughter, rollators on March 15, 2025| 5 Comments »

***Me in my favorite place, a busy newspaper newsroom back in the late 1980s.*** — Photo by my work colleague and dear friend Charlie Trentelman.

Aging my Way

I came across the above picture of me sitting in a newsroom in Ogden, Utah, and my first thought was that I looked quite young. But reflecting back on that time in my life, I realized I wasn’t, well at least by some standards. The photo was taken some time in the late 1980s when I was pushing 50.

While the past 35 years have been kind to me in many ways, my body has gone the normal way for my years – it’s succumbed to the pull of gravity and become flabby and wrinkly.

As I look at that photo of me, I recalled that it was taken about the same time I hiked up a mountain with a woman who was in her 80s, and I remembered that she got to the top of the mountain before me.

I recall hoping that I would be as spry as her when I reached my 80s. It was wishful thinking that didn’t happen. Somewhere in my late 70s, hiking up a mountain ceased to exist as a possibility for me. And a couple or so years later I got a rollator, which lets me take nice walks on flat ground – and I bless the person who invented such a device because my balance is the shits.

Meanwhile, despite my sagging body, I am blessed in many ways, including having love and laughter in my life. While the love, which I didn’t feel I had when I was younger, is comforting, I don’t discount the laughter. As George Bernard Shaw said: “You don’t stop laughing when you grow old. You grow old when you stop laughing.”

I think that’s especially true when you can laugh at yourself.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion Scamp. She is an avid reader whose mind is always asking questions (many of which are unanswerable), an enthusiastic birder, staff writer for Story Circle Network’s Journal, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining. She also believes one is never too old to chase a dream.

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On Being a Writer

Posted in aging, Art, journalism, Journeys, Travels With Maggie, Writing, tagged careers, dropouts, retirement on December 27, 2024| 2 Comments »

Just as an eagle must fly, I must write. — Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

“Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life.” – Lawrence Kasdan

I’ve been retired from being a newspaper journalist for 20 years now. It was a job I loved. I thrived under the stress of the interviewing, the research and writing against a daily deadline. Every day was a new learning experience – from writing about Father’s Day from the view of shelter dads to interviewing a former president at a busy airport.

I miss the excitement, and even the grind of that kind of life, which all began two years after I decided – without a doubt in my head – that I had to become a writer. That was a huge dream for someone who was a high school dropout.

As one of my efforts, I applied for a reporter’s position. I saw the job as an opportunity to hone my writing skills. Instead, I was hired as a darkroom flunky at the small Texas Gulf Coast newspaper to which I had applied — for the grand salary of $1,25 an hour.

Toward the goal of becoming a reporter, I started taking journalism classes at the local community college. Fortunately, due to luck and the resignation of two college-educated guys, I got my wish – and a 25-cent an hour raise.

The year was 1967, and I was ecstatic. What I experienced for the next four years, beginning as a green reporter with no experience of the real world, was at least the equivalent of a master’s degree, not just in journalism but in life. Those experiences, along with hard work and my clippings, took me through the rest of a successful journalism career that lasted for 37 years.

And beyond – when I retired from my journalism job, I didn’t retire from writing. A day in which I do not put pen to paper or fingers on a keyboard leaves me feeling short-changed and restless.

But the writing I did in earlier years was all about other people and things – as all true journalists should do. What I write today is all about me and how I feel about things. No longer a journalist, I’ve become an essayist writing about my view of the world – and myself.

The change wasn’t easy, nor safe, because as a personal essayist I expose myself to the world. The transformation began after I wrote the first draft of Travels with Maggie, a book about me and my dog RVing together across America. I was told by a group of writers, who critiqued my efforts before the book was published, that my writing lacked voice.

And they were right. I suddenly saw that I was still writing as a journalist. So, I rewrote the book, adding the voice of an old broad who was still learning and still had a zest for life.

And that’s how I continue to write today – almost every day. I can’t help myself. I think that the day I stop writing will be the day I stop breathing.

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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Memory and Time

Posted in aging, Art, journalism, Journeys, Writing, tagged memory, Sallie Tinsdale, The Best American Essays 2024 on December 11, 2024| 4 Comments »

***A week from now, what colors would you recall the colors of these flowers? More likely than not, it won’t be purple and yellow. — Art by Pat Bean***

Aging My Way

Memory is fickle, sometimes true and sometimes false. I didn’t need Sally Tisdale’s essay “Mere Belief” in The Best American Essays 2024 to know that. All I have to do is listen to my adult children. When they recall one specific family event, no two remembrances of it are ever alike, including mine. We all could have been somewhere else on a different day.

But I found the article well-worth the read as the author attacked the subject from an ethical writer’s point of view. She believes that we writers have a contract with our readers that says we are telling the truth.

I’ve always tried to adhere to this ideal – and wish all writers had signed the same contract. But enough of that.

Sallie also noted that writers sometimes don’t write the truth but think they are. This is especially true of memoir writing where an author recalls lengthy conversations that happened when they were only two or three years old. But then she went on to say that: “Our false and shifting memories of the past don’t matter to anyone but ourselves. The future only cares about what we learn from them.”

And that line of thought brought me to how I had looked at my childhood from a child’s point of view, and then how one day when I was approaching 40, I viewed it through an adult’s experience. I realized I had failed to be the mother I wanted to be, not from not trying, but from circumstances.

It was only then that I realized my own mother had actually loved me, that it was circumstances, including three much younger brothers and other heavy burdens she carried on her shoulder, that meant I didn’t get the same attention I had when I had been her only child.

A memoir I would have written at 20 would have been much different than what I would have written at 40. At 85, I can see how it would be even more different today. Experience, especially observing the world around me, has made me thankful for the great childhood I had.

Time has a way of changing things – and one’s fickle memories.

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Friday Morning Reflections

Posted in aging, journalism, Journeys, Writing on July 12, 2024| 1 Comment »

Aging My Way

After 60 years and almost as many books, the novelist and travel writer, Paul Theroux, who is 83, says he will stop writing when he falls out of his chair. He says ordering his thoughts on paper is not a job but a process of my life. And he dismisses writers’ complaints about the hellish difficulty of being a writer as a dishonest complaint.

As I came across these words from one of my favorite authors this morning, I thought about my own life. I began writing when I was 25, which means I have also been writing for 60 years. And if I added up my 37 years of daily newspaper stories, my one published book, and over 1,500 blogs on this site, I suspect I’ve written as many words as Paul – and like him, I’m still writing — and still love doing it.

And today’s Bean Pat goes to all out there who still love what they are doing in life. It means there were at least a few good choices made as we struggled through the years.

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, staff writer for the Story Circle Network Journal, 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.

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A Bug Named Chigger

Posted in aging, Dogs, journalism, Journeys, road trip, Travel, Writing, tagged driving, VW Bugs on April 22, 2024| 2 Comments »

In 2014, I bought this red car and named her Cayenne. She is not as shiny today, but driving her this morning felt empowering. Pepper, whom I’m holding, spent the last eight months with me during my RVing days before going to doggie heaven a few years after I moved to Tucson.

Aging My Way

I got behind the wheel of my car for the first time in over six weeks this morning. It was just a short drive, but after a knee replacement and three stents put into my heart, it was extremely empowering.

While most people I know, find driving, especially in rush-hour conditions, annoying and frustrating, the activity has long been my happy place. I think it began back in 1967 when I bought a 1963 red VW Bug shortly after I went to work for a small local newspaper.

At first, I used it just to get back and forth to work, but then I was promoted from dark-room flunky to reporter, a life-changing milestone that begin my 37-year journalism career.

Over the next four years, I drove that Bug over 100,000 miles to get to and from assignments all over Texas Gulf Coast’s Brazoria County. With five children at home, a lazy husband, and a demanding editor to please, driving in that car was the only alone time I had. Enclosed and sitting behind its wheel, I felt serene and at peace, about the only time I did during that period of my life.

***This is a 1963 VW Bug, like the one I put 100,000 miles on between 1967-71. Amazingly you can still find them on the road.***

When I moved to Northern Utah, I drove between there and Texas to visit family often, heady with each opportunity to find a different route for the journey. And when I finally retired, I spent nine years driving a small RV, with just a canine companion, all over America. I loved every moment of the 150,000 miles I drove exploring this awesome country. I found beauty everywhere I looked.

At 85, and with poor vision in the dark, I gave up night driving several years back. And I know there is going to come a time when I will have to relinquish my car keys because of my age. But thankfully, that time hasn’t arrived yet.

Oh, and by the way, I paid $600 for that Bug I called Chigger – and sold it for $900 four years later. It’s the best bargain I’ve ever experienced.

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.

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The Murder of Crows

Posted in aging, Birds, journalism, Journeys, Writing, tagged murder of crows on January 31, 2024| 3 Comments »

Aging My Way

I’m reading A Murder of Crows by Sarah Yarwood-Lovett. It’s a cozy mystery with an ecologist as the protagonist. With all the many, many books out there to choose from, I was attracted to this one simply because of the title. You see, I once was a member of a small group that called itself The Murder of Crows.

The group membership numbered a half dozen women or so, all well past the age innocence, with marriage, children, divorces and life experiences in our varied backgrounds.

We met once a week for lunch and got together occasionally for other activities and events. Our conversations were filled with interesting chatter, raucous laughter, irreverent remarks and commentary about politics and world events. We were a liberal group with four journalists, in various capacities, among us.

I was in my early 40s when I was introduced to the group by a younger female colleague at the newspaper where I had just been hired. She didn’t stick around long, however, as she soon departed to a job in another state. But by that time, I was firmly ensconced in the group.

We got our name from one of the women’s teenage sons who referred to us as a bunch of old crows. Instead of being insulted we started calling ourselves The Murder of Crows, which is actually the proper name for a group of crows.

We stayed together for the next 20 years or so before moves and deaths begin taking their toll. Only three members were left behind when I retired in 2004, sold my home and took off to tour America in a small RV. I kept in touch, but while I was traveling around another member died, and then after I settled in Tucson in 2013, one more death occurred.

That’s what happens to friends when they reach their eighth decades of life. I got to visit with the other lone Murder of Crows’ member when I visited my old hometown last September. And I got a nice long snail mail letter from her a couple of weeks ago.

While I hope there will be many more visits and letters, I know it’s important that I treat each treasured get-together and letter as if it were the last – because it just might be.

Now I think I will stop here and go write that return letter to one of the last two still-standing Murder of Crows’ members. It’s important to me.

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A Brain Full of Questions

Posted in aging, Art, journalism, Uncategorized, Writing on February 23, 2023| 2 Comments »

Aging My Way

I came across a quote by John F. Kennedy this morning that I thought was worthy of being copied into my journal. “Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought,” he said. As I don’t want to write about politics today, I’ll let you put your own understanding and meaning to these words.

Meanwhile, I frequently copy quotes into my journal. Usually, they are ones that cleverly and inspiringly put into words something meaningful to me, sometimes even causing me to rethink a subject.

One quote that came to my wandering/wondering brain this morning was the well-known (well at least it sure be familiar to some of you) was “The pen is mightier than the sword.” As I added those words to my journal as part of my thoughts, I wanted to give credit to the author. My brain was telling me it was Benjamin Franklin, but then the old reporter adage, “double check even if your mother says it’s so,” sent me doing some quick research.

I’m glad I did because I discovered that the phrase was first written by novelist and playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton. He penned the words in his historical play Cardinal Richelieu in 1839.

As so often happens, that search sent me on another search. Why was Edward’s last name hyphenated? The answer was that his father’s name was General William Earle Bulwer and his mother’s name was Elizabeth Barbara Lytton.

Now that seemed odd to me, as in those days women were still considered property. So, who was Elizabeth?

My research continued and I learned that she was a member of the Lytton family of Knebworth House in Hertfordshire, England. After her father’s death, Elizabeth resumed her father’s surname, by a royal license of 1811. That year she returned to Knebworth House, which by then had become dilapidated. She renovated it by demolishing three of its four sides and adding Gothic towers and battlements to the remaining building.

She lived at Knebworth with her son, the writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton, until her death. Because of a long-standing dispute she had with the church, she is buried not with her ancestors at St Mary’s Knebworth, but in the Lytton Mausoleum.

Hmm. I wonder if the dispute had anything to do with women’s rights. But what’s the significance of Knebworth House. My brain was still on a roll.

It’s an English Country House (Looked like a mansion to me), according to Wikipedia, that has been the home of the Lytton family since 1490. Furthermore, the grounds are home to the Knebworth Festival, a recurring open-air rock and pop concert held since 1974, and until 2014 was home to another hard rock festival, Sonisphere.

And suddenly I realized the morning was almost over. This happens a lot.

It’s a good thing I’m retired.

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On Being a Writer

Posted in aging, Books, journalism, Journeys, Uncategorized, Writing on February 17, 2023| 1 Comment »

My former newspaper colleague and dear friend Charlie Trentelman has been browsing the archives of The Standard-Examiner, where I worked for over 20 years. He came across these old clippings and emailed me a copy. Ah! … The memories.

Aging My Way

Laurie Lisle, in her memoir Word for Word said perhaps one of the reasons she wanted to be a reporter is because she could ask anyone about almost anything.

I remember responding to that question a few times in the same way. Of course, it went much deeper than that, with the most important thing being that I wanted to write, and I wanted to be read.

That’s why I blog. It’s why I wrote Travels with Maggie, why I am the staff writer for Story Circle Networks’ journal, and why, occasionally these days, I still submit articles to a variety of publications.

And if that isn’t enough, I fill a page or two in my personal journal most days.

I write because to not do so would be to not breath. I consider myself blessed to have found this passion in my life when I was 25. It happened about 2 a.m. in the morning when I couldn’t sleep, and for some unknown reason found myself getting up and writing about an incident that had moved me deeply the day before.

The only thing I had ever written before this were high school English assignments, which I didn’t particularly enjoy. But I had been, from the time I first learned the alphabet, a bookworm. I read every opportunity I got, from the words on a cereal box to Tolstoy’s War and Peace. In my mind, writers were a breed so far above me that I couldn’t picture being among them.

In fact, it was a dozen or more years after I was supporting myself as a newspaper writer before I finally realized I was actually one of them. And even longer after that before I could actually call myself a writer.

It has now been 58 years since that devious writing bug infected me — and changed the whole trajectory of my life.

I’ve come to love that bug with all my heart. And I’m still writing and hope to be right up until the day I die.

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When Ideas Collide

Posted in aging, Art, Books, journalism, Journeys, tagged Antonin Scalia., Ruth Bader Ginsburg on January 3, 2023| 6 Comments »

***Sunflowers in a fish bowl? Now that’s a debateable idea.*** — art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

I’m reading My Own Words by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom I’ve admired ever since hearing her answer to the question: How many women do you think should be on the Supreme Court? “Nine” was her reply, noting that nobody thought anything was wrong about having nine men on the court.

But although I admire her for that statement and looked at her as one of my feminine role models, I kind of disagree. If nothing else my 83 years on this planet has given me, I’ve learned that women and men think differently.

And in my opinion, as a former journalist, that’s not a bad thing. It provides a greater scope of possibilities for coming up with the best solutions to problems or situations. Or as the saying goes: “Two heads are better than one.”

My personal fight over the years has simply been one to have the same opportunities, and the same pay for the same work as men. And the opposite, as well.

And that brings me to Ruth’s tribute to the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who was often on the opposite side of an issue than Ruth. Even so, the two were best friends.

Wrote Ruth about this dichotomy: “I attack ideas, I don’t attack people. Some very good people have some very bad ideas. And if you can’t separate the two, you gotta get another day job.”

These words console me in my own life, because like so many other people these days, I have friends and loved ones on the opposite sides of the political polarization that has Americans at odds these days.

I think it couldn’t help but be a more pleasant world if more people thought like Ruth – and attacked ideas instead of people.

What do you think?

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, 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.

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A Good News Day

Posted in aging, Art, journalism, Journeys on May 18, 2022| 6 Comments »

**Daily Sketch, by Pat Bean: Another way I keep my mind off the bad news that dominates the media these days.**

I often start my day by reading the news. I’ve made it my goal to find something good in what I read, just a little something to offset all the bad news going on these days.

I’m stubborn, so I usually do eventually find something to cheer me up, to confirm the belief of one of my journalism mentors, Charles Kuralt, that there’s enough goodness and kindness out there to make up for all the bad-news headlines.

I’ve been in this habit since way back in the late 1960s, when I was a green-behind-the-ears reporter working at a small local Texas Gulf Coast newspaper.

It started when a woman called into the paper to report that some young teenagers had aided her in changing a tire when she had a blowout on a back road.

“You just never print anything good about teenagers,” she said.

As it happened, this was a week in which our paper had been running a daily, front-page story, featuring outstanding high school students in our community. I asked the woman if she had seen the articles. She hadn’t, then shamefully admitted that she read the paper every day but somehow had missed them.

It seems people are drawn more to reading bad news than good news, I concluded, and made a promise to myself to not ever be that woman. It influenced how I read a newspaper, and how I reported the news. Most news, at least back then, was just basic information, neither good nor bad. And while the bad news, even back then, had bolder headlines, the newspaper also included good news stories, a new business opened, a dog saved its owner in some way, scholarships were awarded.

Good news back then also included many first-woman achievements, which I wrote about frequently in the 1970s and 1980s. It was yet one more of these that caught my attention today in the 2020s.

For the first time, soccer players representing the United States men’s and women’s national teams will receive the same pay and prize money, including at World Cups, under landmark agreements with the U.S. Soccer Federation that will end years of litigation and bitter public disputes over what constitutes “equal pay.”

The U.S. women’s soccer team, it should be noted, won a World Cup championship and an Olympic bronze medal during its six-year fight for equal pay.

As a woman who fought for equal pay for most of her career, I think this achievement is definitely good news. While it doesn’t outweigh the other news I read this day, it does let me continue believing in silver linings.

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