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Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

OK! So, Do Something Else

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Journeys, Writing on July 4, 2023| 9 Comments »

Sitting under a large old tree in the shade is what appeals to me today. — Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

My granddaughter Shanna and her wife Dawn are cleaning my gutters. I came in from watching them because I felt useless – and because I got antsy about their safety climbing up and down the ladder.

But I knew it would be annoying to tell them to be careful, because at their age I was the one climbing the ladders and putting myself in even more precarious positions. It’s what you do before you reach your eighth decade. And I found people who told me to be careful, or especially “You shouldn’t do that,” quite irritating.

Meanwhile, there are a lot more things than cleaning my gutters that I can no longer do, or have to do differently, than when I was younger.

I use my rollator to bring in groceries and take out trash because carrying anything more than a few pounds hurts my back. I also use the rollator to walk my canine companion Scamp. I use a pair of pliers to open water and soda bottles because my hands aren’t up to the task any more. Household chores are accomplished a small bit at a time here and there during the day with occasional help to lift something heavy or move a piece of furniture.

Some years back, I took up birding when my white-water rafting and tennis activities seemed a bit too much for my years. And over time, I eased down my 20-mile hikes to five-mile hikes — until my knees said no more. My birding these days is mostly done from a shady place to sit to watch and listen.

The thing is, I’ve found ways and things to replace what the years have taken away from me. I make use of my time to read and write more, and to piddle with my watercolors. I also take online classes and try to learn something new every day, even if it’s just the meaning of a new word – today it was polymathy, which means having encyclopedic knowledge.

The plus side of aging is that the years have also taken away all the angst, insecurities and unnecessary drama of my younger days. Most days I feel as if I’m living my best days.

  It’s good to be an old broad, especially when you have loved ones like Shanna and Dawn to clean your gutters.

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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Tears, Cows, Dogs and Laughter

Posted in aging, Books, Dogs, Journeys, Travels With Maggie, Uncategorized, Writing, tagged , on June 15, 2023| 5 Comments »

From my journals: The day I brought Maggie home. She accompanied me in my RV travels for eight years, and was the inspiration for the title of my book, Travels with Maggie. She experienced my laughter more than my tears.

Aging My Way

A character in a book I was reading said that if you ever needed a good cry, do it around a cow, because dogs notice and come around with licks and kisses to cheer you up.

Thinking about the five dogs that have been my companions over the past eight decades, I couldn’t help but agree with the comment. The dogs, in their turn, each knew when a soft nuzzle was needed. And their warm bodies cuddled up next to mine always comforted me.

So, despite agreeing with the fictional character, whose name I can’t recall right now, I think I’ll stick to dogs when I cry. That even makes sense since there are no cows nearby.

Tears have long been a part of my life. I cried a lot as a child, my favorite place being inside a hedge with a small black mutt, whom I had uncreatively named Blackie. I cried because I was not popular, because my family wasn’t the fantasy one portrayed on television. I cried because I thought no one loved me. I cried if I thought someone looked at me wrong.  

I was a foolish child usually crying over nothing, but the tears soothed me. In later years, I learned that tears have actually been scientifically proven to be beneficial, that they detoxify the body and restore its balance.

As a young mother and wife, I cried because my own family was not the everyone-lived-happily-ever-after kind. I cried when my children were hurt, and when my marriage dissolved.

Later I would cry because I couldn’t find my perfect soul mate. Those tears were usually shed at midnight when I was curled up beneath a quilt, and often interrupted when my dog, a faithful cocker spaniel named Peaches back then, would wiggle beneath the covers to comfort me.

 I don’t think a cow could do that – not to mention I wouldn’t want it to. And neither, I eventually decided, did I want, or need, a soul mate. I was my own soul mate, and I had a good life, and a good dog. This is probably why I rarely cry these days.

Luckily, I laugh a lot. And science has proven that laughter is quite good for the body, too.

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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Peels and Books

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Books, Journeys, Writing, tagged , , on June 6, 2023| 4 Comments »

Tucson’s saguaros are now in bloom — and the Gila Woodpeckers love it. — Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

I shared some potato salad I had made with my friend Jean the other day, and she asked: “Why did you peel the potatoes? “Because I don’t like potato peels,” I replied. To which she said, “I do.”

I thought about this yesterday while reading Vegetables Unleashed, a cookbook by Chef Jose Andres who talked about vegetable peels, clearly stating that he always peeled his vegetables, even tomatoes.

“If the skins don’t bother you, you can skip that, but I’m not sure we can be friends,” he wrote. The comment, I suspect, was written as a joke. But then it reminded me of something I had read the week before in a post about books. Yes, I know. My over-active brain is always trying to connect dots.

Anyway, the earlier comment, was “I don’t think I could be friends with anybody who doesn’t read books.”

I thought that was a bit self-absorbed, even though I realized on reading it that my conversations with other book readers were always more fun, especially when discovering that the two of us liked and had read many of the same books.

Andres’ comment, meanwhile, was way over the top. I mean my friendship with Jean, who is also a chef, isn’t the least bit unhinged because one of us likes peels and one of us doesn’t.

Differences are what makes the world go round, or so I’ve been told – and believe. So as long as you don’t make me eat potato peels, or ban me from reading whatever I like… Oops, now my over-active brain is thinking about people who want to ban books.

Now those are people I’m sure I could never be friends with.

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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A Stubborn Canine Companion

Posted in aging, Dogs, Journeys, Writing on May 3, 2023| 2 Comments »

There’s a reason why, after originally naming him Harley, I shortly, afterwards renamed him Scamp.

Aging My Way

No politicking today. Instead, let’s talk about my canine companion Scamp.

I’m a morning person, normally ready to get up with the sun each day, and so is Scamp, who is immediately ready for his morning walk. The combination usually works well.

Last summer, I moved to a ground level apartment with its own fenced-in small yard. One of the goals was that when I wasn’t up to walking him, Scamp could do his business in the yard.

Scamp, a shelter rescue who my granddaughter says landed with his butt in the butter, had other ideas. He decided his yard was the last place he would pee or potty. Even retrieval of the poop of a strange dog, which was not picked up by its asshole owner, that was retrieved to be placed in our yard would budge him. Nor would walking him inside the yard with a leash. Even two full days of no walks outside the yard would budge him.

That latter effort made him sick, and at that point I gave up. It’s not often I find someone who is more stubborn than me, but Scamp ups me.  So, I learned how to walk him using my new rollator. He gets long walks when I’m up to it, and very short walks when I’m not.

Meanwhile, I quickly learned that he had no problem peeing in my neighbor’s yard while I was talking with him, nor in my granddaughter’s nearby yard in the same apartment complex.     He just didn’t want to do any business in his own yard.

So now let’s talk about what happened earlier this week.

I had stayed up into the early hours listening to an audible book, so when Scamp was ready for his walk, I wasn’t. Being hopeful, I slipped out of bed and opened the bedroom’s sliding glass door that led into the yard.

Scamp moved to the bottom of the bed and stared outside for about 10 minutes, then returned with kisses and chocolate brown eyes that said: I really need to go for a walk. So, get up and take me!

As usual, I gave in and got up. Scamp then went outside but just to sit and stare at me with a look that said hurry, hurry! When I was finally dressed and picked up his leash, he did a Snoopy happy dance.

It was so cute that I forgave him for making me get up. Then, while I was fiddling to open the gate, Scamp lifted his leg and peed on my new garden gnome that stood nearby – inside the yard.

Scamp’s lucky that I love him as much as I do.

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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But: I Was Never Silent

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Journeys, Writing on May 1, 2023| 4 Comments »

Aging My Way

My generation lies between what Tom Brokaw calls the Greatest Generation — those who lived through the Great Depression and then went on to fight in World War II – and the Boomers (1946-64).

Born in 1939, I belong to the Silent Generation, one the Encyclopedia Britannica says consists of: “cautious conformists who sought stability, worked hard, and thrived by not rocking the boat in an era of booming postwar economic prosperity.” This generation also had a lower birth rate than the generation before or after, it was noted.

I think we Silents were also influenced by the Great Depression because it was our parents who lived through it. I was raised by a mother who could stretch a penny to the moon and back, and a bit of it rubbed off onto me. By sometimes following her example, and also setting spending priorities, I was able over the years to follow a few of my dreams to completion.

But I’ve never been silent. And while my generation had fewer offspring overall, I had five children. That was awkward when all my work colleagues once were sprouting zero population growth pamphlets. Looking around at what we’re doing to Mother Earth today, I’ve shifted over to their way of thinking – and my adult grandkids seem to agree.

Time changes everything is an understatement.

Today, some politicians – racist ones in my opinion – are calling for families to have 10 or more kids. Ouch. I feel sorry for their poor mothers. Frankly, I wish we would all just mingle together more so that everyone would end up a golden brown.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to understand what the Generation Xers (1965-79), Xenials (1976-85), Gen Y/Millennials (1980-94) and Generation Z (1995-2012) are all about. Yes, I had to do a bit of research to name them all.

 Today, looking at my grand and great kids – who range in age from four to mid-40s — I think they’re doing all right. I know for one thing; they don’t put up with all the crap we Silents, who didn’t want to rock the boat, did. And that’s a good thing.

But I would like them to be more respectful when I tell them I had to walk 10 miles to school in a snow storm.

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 Idea of Dragons

Posted in aging, Art, Journeys, Writing, tagged on April 3, 2023| 1 Comment »

Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

          I’m always toying with writing ideas and, like many writers I keep an ever-changing list of them. The topics get erased as I follow through with a piece of writing, or deleted, when on second thought I decide the idea is worthless.

For about seven years now, the word dragons on this list has been taunting me every time I see it. My original idea was to write an essay called Dragons: A to Z. While that never panned out, I was reluctant to hit the delete button, probable because like other writers down through the centuries, these mythical creatures fascinate me.  

And while I didn’t get all the way through the alphabet with dragons, I did come up with some good quotes about them. Some, like the following, have had a special meaning to me.

“It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations if you live near him.” – J.R.R. Tolkien. This was the first dragon quote I copied into my journals, and metaphorically speaking, I was living next to a dragon at the time. 

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” ~ Neil Gaiman. A good quote for anyone whose path becomes dotted with potholes – or deep gorges.

“We are our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.” ~ Tom Robbins. I remember clearly the day I gave up my idea that a knight on a white horse ever existed. It was a harsh reality that turned into major, and positive, turning point in my life. And it became the theme for my group of white-water rafting buddies.

And finally, a reminder that there are things in life worth fighting for. “Here be dragons to be slain, here be rich rewards to gain; If we perish in the seeking, why, how small a thing is death!” — Dorothy L. Sayers.

Perhaps you have a favorite dragon quote you would like to share?

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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High Five to Differences

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Journeys, Writing on March 27, 2023| 6 Comments »

The Meadowlark and the Chukar, different but both still awesome. — Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

It is the part of us that is not like the others that is the best of us.

I came across these words recently, and it set my brain cells to pondering. I mentally started listing my own oddities, going back to my childhood when I was way too loud. I know that for a fact because I was always being told to lower my voice.

And being told to be quiet and shut up didn’t stop at home, where my mother and grandmother often told me that children are to be seen and not heard. It was frequently echoed by my teachers and classmates.

Except instead of being cute — I was skinny and freckle-faced with stringy hair — I can see myself, when young, as being very like Hermione in the Harry Potter stories: a know-it-all and always the first student to raise a hand when a question was asked.

My classmates nicknamed me Cootie-Brain, which followed me around from first to fourth grade, finally ending when my family moved and I went to a new school.

But the label Cootie-Brain was so hurtful to me as a child that I couldn’t speak it as an adult until I was in my 40s. And it wasn’t until I could finally write the word down and talk about it that the wounds it had inflicted on my soul could heal.

While the years toned me down, I also came to the realization that my true friends accepted me just as I was, because the loudness still returns when I get excited or enthusiastic about something. But now at 83, I’m happy I can still get excited. Maybe if I had tamped down my enthusiastic loudness when I was young, I wouldn’t have this wonderful asset today.

There are many ways I’ve always felt different from others, but the years, along with life and books, have taught me that we are all different in our own ways. And isn’t that wonderful?

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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National Women’s History Month

Posted in aging, Art, Journeys, Writing, tagged on March 3, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

These days there seems to be a month for everything. In March, there’s Sing-With-Your-Child Month, Appreciate Dolphins Month, Berries and Cherries Month, Mad for Plaid Month and National On-Hold Month – and that’s just to name a few of the many I usually never hear about, nor celebrate.

On a more relevant note, at least to me, is that March is National Women’s History Month. I’ve come a long way from being raised in a time when women’s proper place was thought to be married, barefoot, and pregnant to thinking I should have the same rights as a man.

My original perspective was that women’s fight for equality began in the 1960s and ‘70s, spurred by women like Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan, and the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment.

These were the years that marked the beginning of my awareness of inequality and unfairness in the world, and not just for women. Not surprisingly, these years coincided with the beginning of my 37-year journalism career and my personal fight for equal pay for equal work.

History, however, tells a different story. While there are many individual stories going way back in time, the big fight for equal rights for American women began in 1869 with the founding of the National Women’s Suffrage Association by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who along with women like Susan B. Anthony and Victoria Hull, fought for women’s right to vote.

This resulted in an 1884 decision by the Supreme Court that citizenship does not give women the right to vote. Women didn’t give up, however, even though many of them were severely harassed or even jailed simply for continuing to fight for the vote.

Then, in 1913, thousands of women marched on Washington D.C. demanding the right to vote, a right that was finally achieved nationally in 1920 with the passage of the 19th Amendment. As a writer, I think of all the stories, told and untold, that led up to this momentous occasion. I also am still astonished that this took place just 19 years before I was born.

It’s because of these strong women of the past that I have the privileges I do today. And I’m thankful. Yes. National Women’s History Month is one I will celebrate.

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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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.

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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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.

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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