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Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

Quotes From My Journal

Posted in aging, Art, Journeys, Writing on November 12, 2025| 1 Comment »

“This morning do something different: When you wake up in the morning, wake your forgotten and forsaken dreams up as well, wake them up like an insisting rooster!” – Mehmet Murat ildan

Aging My Way

I’m a collector of quotes, and I thought it would be fun to share a few that have particular meaning to me.

“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” Bertram Russell, British philosopher. Something to remember when I’m enjoying wasting time.

“I might not always have a clue what I’m doing, but I’ll get there eventually.” – Ioana Seritan, a birder like me. This made me think about the nine years I traveled around the country without GPS. I got lost often but always ended up where I was going. Getting lost was part of the fun – still is.

 “It is the part of us that is not like the others that makes us special.” – Actress Sharon Stone. I wish I had known that when I was a young girl because I never felt like the others.

“We shall never have equal rights until we take them, nor equal respect until we command it.” – Belva Lockwood, who ran for president in 1884 and was the first woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court. I fought for equal pay for equal work my whole working career.  And the fight for equality by women is more important today than ever.  

“Wishy Washy can be dull,” Dinty W. Moore, American Essayist. I need to take this good advice from Dinty. I certainly don’t want to bore my readers.

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.

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Right Road Wrong Way

Posted in aging, Journeys, Lonely Planet Pathfinder, Travel, Writing on October 4, 2025| 1 Comment »

Kim and me on my 70th birthday just before we jumped out of an airplane together, just another one of our many adventures during our 40 years of friendship.

Road Trip: Day 1

My plan, come hell or high water, was to drive to Ogden, Utah, to help my long-time friend Kim celebrate her birthday. Her plan was to fly to Tucson, and we do a roundtrip road adventure to Ogden and back to Tucson. Her excuse was that she wanted to collect national park and monument stamps for her Passport America Book.

Kim, although much younger than me, is a dear friend. And while I did know she wanted to collect the stamps, I also suspected it was a way to keep this 86-year-old-broad, who had suffered a heart attack the previous year, from making the 800-mile trip alone. Whatever, I jumped at her offer, especially since she suggested we take our time and have several hotel sleepovers along the way.

Road trips are one of my passions.

Kim got airline tickets that flew her into Tucson on Sept. 19 and flew her out on Sept. 28, then, after mentioning she wanted stops at Petrified National Forest and Four Corners, she left the rest of the planning to me.

I started our adventures off right in Tucson, where after she arrived, we made quick trips to Sabino Canyon National Recreation Area and Saguaro National Park for her to pick up stamps.

The plan for the next day was to hit Petrified Forest National Park and Painted Desert National Park. But we didn’t quite make it.

First off, in Globe, Arizona, we got off track and went 50 miles – Yes, 50 miles – on the right road in the wrong direction. About the same time, we discovered the error, my oldest son, whom I had sent our agenda and who was following us on an app called Life360, called and wanted to know why we were headed toward Phoenix.

On backtracking we realized that we had missed the turnoff because our hurried pee stop was on the wrong side of the junction where we were supposed to turn east. The silver lining – which everyone knows I am always looking for – was   that Kim bought lottery tickets at the gas station where we stopped and won $50 – and that there was a lot of laughter in the car while we backtracked.

Winning the lottery was Kim’s good luck. But as navigator I have to take the blame for the lost two hours and 100 miles it took us to get back to get back on track – but not the next fiasco that happened later the same day.

To be continued …

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.

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Looking For – and Finding – Joy

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Dogs, Journeys, Writing, tagged on September 13, 2025| 5 Comments »

Watching and drawing birds gives me joy.

“Joy is not in things; it is in us.” – Richard Wagner

Aging My Way

If ever there was a time to have joy in my life, it is now. For one thing, I’m an old broad who raised five children without disposable diapers. And since, as a retired newspaper journalist, I can’t find any joy in reading the news, I’m looking for it elsewhere.

The magic is that I don’t have to leave home to find it.

Take for instance just the past five days when I started keeping a joy journal.

Monday: Joy was waking up at dawn and watching an Anna’s hummingbird at my nectar feeder and listening to sparrows and finches twittering their own joy for a new day.

Tuesday: Joy was grinding some coffee beans from Kenya, a gift from my guardian angel daughter in law, and then enjoying a freshly brewed cup of coffee with a good book in my hand and my canine companion Scamp beside me.

Wednesday: Joy was having a good friend stop by for a happy hour, and the good cheer and laughter that came with the visit.

Thursday: Joy was the faithful daily call from a son and our conversation this day about a TV program we’re both watching and who won the daily game of Wordle.

Friday: Joy was a call from a long-time friend to discuss our upcoming road trip, my first since my heart attack a year and a half ago. And thinking about it after we hung up, my mind began singing Willie Nelson’s On The Road Again. At heart, I’m a wanderer.

I know these are simple, small things. But then the years have taught me that’s where joy is usually found.

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.

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Just The Facts, Please

Posted in aging, Journeys, Writing, tagged , on July 14, 2025| Leave a Comment »

In 2004, I retired from being a journalist. This was my retirement party with colleagues and friends all around me. And my son, D.C., who now subscribes to the newspaper, where it all started, is sitting on the ground third from left.

Aging My Way

A furniture maker creates an ugly chair. No problem, it’s firewood. A chef’s unpalatable casserole goes in the garbage. An artist doesn’t like a painting; they can toss it, use the back for a different painting, or paint over it.

But a newspaper journalist’s mistake is out there for the world to see, and can even be put out there for the world to see again 55 yearslater, which is exactly what happened to me this past week

My oldest son lives in the same circulation area for the small newspaper, The Brazosport Facts, whose back door I slipped into many years ago. I wanted to write for the paper, but without any experience the only job I was offered was as a darkroom flunky. The year was 1967, before the digital age and when film was developed using chemicals in a blacked-out room.

I conquered the task, however, and then became a nuisance in front of the city editor’s desk asking if there was anything I could do. Just to get rid of me, I suspect, he started sending me out on reporter assignments, which was how I began an award-winning 37-year journalism career.

I worked for The Facts, which my son now subscribes to and reads daily, for four years. It was the equivalent in my mind of a master’s degree in journalism. Of course I made mistakes along the way, but those mistakes only made it into the Facts twice that I can recall. One was a wrong name, and the other a wrong accounting number from a city council meeting.

Both times, I had to write a correction and an apology, one of which was repeated in the YEASTERYEARS column that my son read. It started off with: It seemed like such an appropriate assignment for Facts reporter Pat Bean to cover the opening for Pinto Bean (no relation) Ford …. and then went on to describe my mistake in a kind of funny memory.  

My son thought I would be upset at the mention of my goof. But I was simply delighted to be remembered after 55 years.

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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A Wondering-Wanderer Memory

Posted in aging, Favorite Hikes, Favorite Places, Travel, Writing, tagged , , on July 4, 2025| 2 Comments »

Aging My Way

”Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” – George Bernard Shaw.

Fourteen years ago, I was driving along the Columbia River on the Washington side. I know this because of a photo I took, and which was dropped into my email as a memory.

I get these reminders daily – and they delight me. Many of these photos are similar in nature to the one above of the Selah Cliffs information sign near Yakima, where I took a hike on an interpretive loop, and a bit beyond with my canine companion Maggie.

I looked for, and found the basalt daisy that grows only in this area, and where other plants find it hard to survive. According to the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, the Selah Cliffs is situated in one of the driest parts of the state, in a landscape of bedrock and talus formed from the approximately 12-million-year-old Pomona basalt flow. This basalt lava flow traveled from west-central Idaho to the Pacific Ocean about 373 miles, making it the longest known lava flow on earth.

As a wondering wanderer who now is mostly nesting, the memory of this day from my past enriched my present day, as good memories always do.

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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An Old Broad’s Ponderings

Posted in aging, Books, Journeys, Morning Thoughts, Writing, tagged , , , on June 11, 2025| 2 Comments »

“We are necessarily influenced by those who have come before us.” – Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything.

Aging My Way

The above sentence stood out to me like a yellow sunflower growing among rose bushes. Perhaps because I’ve come to realize how much I’ve been influenced by people and things that have gone before me.

Like all of life, some of the people and things I’ve experienced have been positive influences toward my becoming a better person — and some of my life’s experiences would have been better going straight into the garbage.

Now, at 86, I have this egotistical belief that I can mostly tell the difference. But then my still-with-it brain laughs at myself for even thinking such a thought. Rarely a day goes by that I don’t realize I still have much to learn. Morning chats with a granddaughter assures me of this.

But I have been fortunate enough over the years to have been exposed to a wide view of the world. First, because I read a bit of everything, including polarized versions of the same events; and second, because I was a journalist for 37 years during which time I saw both good and bad. 

Now, as I read the news and try to relate to the world from an old-broad’s point of view, I worry for young people who are denied such exposure because of such things as banned books, religious isolation and histories written by the victors.

Unless one sticks one’s head in the sand — which by the way ostriches do not do — one can’t help but wonder about the things young minds are being filled with today.  

Will these children be influenced by what their parents and friends and politicians say and believe all their lives, or will they begin to draw their own conclusions at some point? It’s something an 86-year-old with eight great-grandchildren ponders from time to time.

Meanwhile, I just hope my grandchildren all just grow up to be kind, regardless of what they believe. But then that’s my hope for all of us.

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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That’s How the Cookie Crumbles

Posted in aging, Art, Journeys, Writing on May 31, 2025| 2 Comments »

Old age means you don’t have to set your alarm clock anymore. — Art by Pat Bean

After 30, a body has a mind of its own. – Bette Midler

Aging My Way

As a 30-year-old editor, I would have changed that to read: After 30, a mind has a body of its own. But as an 86-year-old editor, the only change I would make to Bette’s quote would be to change 30 to 70.

Accurate, or not by medical standards, my body and my mind felt most alive and healthy when I was between the ages of 40 and 60, perhaps because those were the years when I was most active – both physically and mentally. I was quite a late bloomer in all departments.

My body continued to mostly behave itself until I hit my 70s. By the 80s, however, all I can say about my body is it’s in the toilet, which makes me want to repeat, at least a dozen times, my favorite word: Shit!

But life goes on. That’s how the cookie crumbles.

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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Two Mornings

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Books, Journeys, Writing, tagged , on May 14, 2025| 5 Comments »

Yellow warblers sometimes visit my small yard. — Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

“Old age is something only the lucky get to do.”

I was surprised on a recent morning to realize I was sitting in my small patio yard – doing nothing. I had gone out to sit in a cool breeze and watch birds as I drank my morning cream-laced coffee.

But the wind was not gentle, typical for Tucson, and the birds had gone into sheltered hiding somewhere. Their absence barely resonated with me, until I finally realized how comfortable and peaceful I was just sitting there, a state of mind that is fairly new to me.

But I guess that is what happens when one is an 86-year-old broad. In my younger years there was a time I was so impatient to get from one place to another that I ran instead of walked. And my mind was always racing.

This morning when I sat outside with my coffee, birds were twittering all over the place. Amy Tan’s The Backyard Bird Chronicles, which I’m currently reading – and enjoying – inspired me to go inside and get a notebook and start my own chronicles. While my small patio yard doesn’t compare to Tan’s bird haven, I do have a tall cottonwood and two tall oleander bushes in it, plus a couple of bird feeders and one for hummingbird nectar.

As I watched and listened, house sparrows, verdins, lesser goldfinches, house finches, mourning and white-winged doves, Europeans starlings and a spotted grosbeak made their presence known. The bonus was a rose-breasted grosbeak that as far as I know was a first to visit my backyard.

I enjoyed this morning, too, — but not more I think then I did the one in which I simply sat quietly, with only my mind wandering about. It has never stopped racing.

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The Rabbit Hole of Web Surfing

Posted in aging, Books, Journeys, Writing, tagged , , , , , on March 27, 2025| Leave a Comment »

A beach in South Goa — Image from a Goan government travel brochure

Aging My Way

It all started with a word I had never heard before: Vindaloo. From how the word was used in the sentence I was reading in The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin, I determined vindaloo was some kind of food, as the book’s protagonist was heating it up in a microwave for dinner.

But what kind of food, I wondered, and thus begin my journey down the internet rabbit hole, a place I visit almost daily. My surfing told me that vindaloo is a spicy Indian curry. To be more exact, a Goan curry dish, according to Wikipedia.

So, what is Goan, my curious brain asked – and Wikipedia answered: Goan is the demonym used to describe the people native to Goa, India.

So, where is Goa? India’s Southwestern Coast, and additionally it is the country’s smallest state.

And since I’m into travel, even if it’s just from an armchair, I spent a bit of time researching Goa. The Indian state is nicknamed the Pearl of the Orient and its motto, according to the Goan government, is: “May everyone see goodness, may none suffer any pain.” I like that.

Among the other trivia tidbits I learned along the way is that vindaloo is based on a Portuguese dish called vinha d’alhos, which caused my rambling brain to remember that my great-great grandfather was a Portuguese sailor who jumped ship on America’s East Coast.

And with that, I jumped out of the rabbit hole and got back to my day’s activities, which a little bit later found me reading Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, in which he encourages writers like me to stop procrastinating and write. And as if Steven had been peeking at me through a window, he wrote: “Resistance mounts to a pitch that becomes unendurable. At this point vices sink in. Dope, adultery, web surfing…

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.

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Research: Then and Now

Posted in aging, Journeys, Writing, tagged , , on January 28, 2025| 3 Comments »

Aging My Way

Dick Tracy and his “Smart” Watch

I was reading an essay Michael W. Clune wrote about his panic attacks, which began when he was high school. He was told by an emergency room doctor that the best thing to do when he had one was to breath into a paper bag.

There was a technical explanation for doing this, something about hyperventilating, too much oxygen and the lack of enough carbon dioxide. I didn’t quite understand the specifics – but then that’s not what I’m writing about.

It’s what Clune did afterwards when he wanted learn more about panic attacks. He went to his local library, where he checked out the card catalog to locate a book or two about the topic. Not finding much, he then flips pages through the thick “P” Book of an encyclopedia set – which back then was a common item in many households. My family bought one from a traveling salesman and paid for it weekly.

Michael’s description of his search for information took this 85-year-old broad back in time. For years I had duplicated Clune’s actions to satisfy my insatiable curiosity – or to educate myself for a newspaper article I was writing. I also learned to use the Periodical Index. A huge book that was updated monthly listing where to find magazine articles on just about anything.

Those searches back then often took hours, maybe even days. If I think about how I can instantly find information online, it stuns my brain.

But then a lot of things blow my brain these days, like the watch I’m wearing on my wrist. It was a Christmas present from a granddaughter and her wife, who have been worried I would fall or something and couldn’t get to a phone. That I don’t always have my phone on me is a hang up of my age, I’ve concluded.

The new watch lets me both answer and make calls. It reminds me of Dick Tracy, a tough-talking crime fighter portrayed in a comic strip created by Chester Gould way back in 1931. Beginning in 1946, he had a watch in which he could call or be called.

Those facts, by the way, were found almost instantly by a Google (actually I use Bing) search. While I remembered Dick Tracy and his watch, the details hadn’t been stored in my brain.

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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