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It’s Darth Vader Laughable

August 10, 2023 by Pat Bean

Don’t laugh. But if you look you may find Darth Vade atop the Washington National Cathedral.

Aging My Way

I have funny bone that’s ticklish. It doesn’t take much to make me smile or laugh.

For example, it got a good workout this morning when I read a story about the Darth Vader gargoyle that sits atop the Washington National Cathedral. Reading that in an Atlas Obscura article had my jaw dropping with a giggle.        

Wait, I thought. Isn’t the Washington National Cathedral much older than Star Wars? So down the online research rabbit hole I went. Alice has nothing on me.

The cathedral, I learned is officially known as the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the City and Diocese of Washington, and while construction began on it in 1907, renovations have pretty much been going on ever since.

The Vader gargoyle was added in the 1980s, the result of a contest to design a sculpture for a new section of the famed building. A child drew the Vader sculpture, and it was selected for the third-place prize, which included addition in the renovation. I suspect the selection committee had a sizeable funny bone, too.

As an aside about gargoyles, I’m currently reading the series Midlife Magical Madness, which is generously populated by shifter gargoyles. The books have been feeding my funny bone, which is a good thing for this old broad, who reads the daily news, to have.

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.

Posted in aging, Journeys | Tagged , , | 4 Comments »

The Snake and the Chinaberry Tree

August 2, 2023 by Pat Bean

As a kid, I gathered up these berries as ammunition for the neighborhood kid wars. Today I wonder why kids engage in war games? What does it say of the human species?

 “Courage is knowing what not to fear.” — Plato

Every time I pass the chinaberry tree that grows in a neighbor’s yard, it takes me back in time to when I was a young girl joyfully climbing the one that grew in my grandmother’s backyard. The tree was located in a fenced area behind the house where my grandmother raised chickens, rabbits and pigs that eventually found their way to the dinner table.

Beyond this area stood a wild blackberry field that stretched for several football fields down to train tracks. It was in this tree that I often watched the Texas Zypher fly past. The sight of that silver streak may have been the beginning of my lifelong wanderlust, as I always wondered where that train had been and wished I had been there.

And as the zypher passed, I always waved at the engineer, imagining that the whistle that blew in response was just for me. Adulthood eventually inflicted me and I realized that the whistle was blown because of the nearby railroad crossing and not for me. It’s not easy growing up.

Anyway, one day when I went out to climb that chinaberry tree – and to collect its hard green berries for a neighborhood kid’s fight – there was a huge rattlesnake sunning itself on the large rock I used to reach the first limb. I screamed and ran back into the house and never climbed that tree again.

But, without nary another thought about snakes, I continued collecting blackberries, my child’s mind not connecting the fact that field was where that big rattlesnake surely had come from, and had relatives as well.

Instead, I continued enjoying those blackberries with a little sugar and milk

in a bowl, and in the blackberry pies or cobbler my grandmother baked.

It’s kind of funny thinking about that now, which I did during the big monsoon storm that shook up Tucson this past week. There is nowhere Mother   Nature, with her hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, avalanches, hail storms, floods, deadly winds or just a lightning bolt out of the blue, can’t get at you.

I eventually overcame my fear of snakes, although I still keep my distance, and I learned not to let fear of what might happen keep me from living a full life. Growing up is not all bad.

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.

Posted in aging, Journeys, Travel | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments »

An Old Underwood Typewriter

July 7, 2023 by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

I taught myself to type back in the late 1950s on an old Underwood Typewriter that I bought for $5 at a thrift store. I remembered this because I came across an ad this morning from someone wanting to sell an old Underwood for $475.

Wouldn’t it be nice, I thought, if I still had that old typewriter lying about somewhere. But too many moves, and my habit of getting rid of everything I don’t use or love, reminded me that my old typewriter had long vanished from my belongings.

I taught myself how to type on that Underwood back in the 1950s because I thought it might make me employable as a clerk or secretary. I became just good enough that I got a job typing Western Union telegrams that people called in on the phone. It was a brief job, and my best memory of the time is that I took a telegram from Ernie Ford, a radio personality, singer and early-day television host.

I bet not too many of my readers out there will even remember him. Maybe not even telegrams.

I spent the next years after that job being a wife and changing diapers – five kids’ worth of them – before I once again entered the working world. The year was 1967, and typewriters like my old Underwood were being replaced with electric models, and shortly thereafter computers.

I was working for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram when I was forced to use one of the new-fangled contractions for the first time. No way, I thought, would I ever be able to write on it. But two weeks later, typewriters became one of those non-useful things in my life that I would get rid of.

Meanwhile, I’ve become daily hooked to my computer. I use it to write, to learn from, and to communicate with. And I paid just about the same thing for the computer laptop I’m writing this blog on, as what someone now wants to get for an old Underwood Typewriter.

Life is strange.

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.

Posted in aging, Journeys | Tagged | 7 Comments »

OK! So, Do Something Else

July 4, 2023 by Pat Bean

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.

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Journeys, Writing | 9 Comments »

I Am Woman. Hear Me Roar

June 17, 2023 by Pat Bean

I fear weeds have invaded the beautiful flowers. — Photo by Pat Bean

Aging My Way – Pissed and Speaking Out

One of the reasons I left the Baptist Church when I was 14 was that a hell fire and brimstone preacher replaced the calm, gentle pastor who spoke mostly of God’s love for us. He recognized his congregation’s goodness and focused on that instead of calling us all sinners, whether we were or not.

I later quit the Mormon Church, among other things, because as a woman I was a second-class citizen who couldn’t reach the highest degree of glory without a man. I’ve never thought of myself as a second-class citizen, especially since circumstances pushed me into being the family breadwinner, a position which many women find themselves in, want it or not. It wasn’t easy, and for years I fought against a system that paid men more than women for the exact work, and in fact often still does.

I’ve long looked for an answer as to why I was drawn to organized religion in the first place. My parents never went to church, but I felt a need to do so. I’ve never found a satisfying answer to my question. But today, I’m pretty much an atheist, although I shy away from that word. I do believe in a higher power, but I think it’s inside each of us and we have to find it on our own.

Meanwhile the years, particularly recent events, have brought me to the conclusion that some of those who call themselves Christians are the least Christ-like of all. Racism and bigotry have infected their circles. And, more personally, they are advocating, in one way or another, that men are better than women. And women who were raised that way believe it.

The most recent examples are the Baptists expelling churches that have women pastors, and the Shiny Happy People documentary that exposed the IBLP (Institute of Basic Life Principles) which teaches, among other insidious things, that females, from birth, are to be subservient to males, even their incestuous brothers.

Sounds to me like it’s the men writing the rules – and always has been.  

I’m pissed – and scared that this kind of thinking will become more acceptable in the world I live in. And also sad that so many women in the world are still treated as slaves and servants without even the ability to leave their homes, and may even be married off when they are still children.

This is not the kind of blog I like to write. But if we women — and men who don’t have to dominate women to prove they are men – don’t at least speak out against this kind of thinking … well, I fear it’s going to be a sad place for the futures of our female great-grandchildren, of which I now have four.

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.

Posted in aging, Journeys | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments »

Tears, Cows, Dogs and Laughter

June 15, 2023 by Pat Bean

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.

Posted in aging, Books, Dogs, Journeys, Travels With Maggie, Uncategorized, Writing | Tagged , | 5 Comments »

Peels and Books

June 6, 2023 by Pat Bean

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.

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Books, Journeys, Writing | Tagged , , | 4 Comments »

A Stubborn Canine Companion

May 3, 2023 by Pat Bean

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.

Posted in aging, Dogs, Journeys, Writing | 2 Comments »

But: I Was Never Silent

May 1, 2023 by Pat Bean

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.

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Journeys, Writing | 4 Comments »

Hey Y’all: I’m Gonna Be 84

April 15, 2023 by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

I turn 84 in three days, yet I feel like I’m living the best years of my life – and I’m not alone.

We old broads and old farts are still passionate about life according to a recent New York Times article. It doesn’t matter that our faces have begun to resemble topographical maps denoting crevasses and ridges, we’re still moving and kicking.  

The “old” people interviewed for the NY Times piece ranged in age from 71 to 88. They were going on cruises, had day planners for their active lives and were even falling in love – aches and pains be damned!

I think I finally began accepting I wasn’t going to live forever on my 69th birthday. It was the one in which I decided I needed to try something new instead of what I had done for the past 20 or so years, which was to climb Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park on my birthday.

I hate to say it, but that climb on my 69th birthday kicked my butt.

Instead, I went skydiving to celebrate my 70th birthday. Afterward, I continued traveling around the country in an RV with my canine companion, something I had already been doing for five years – and would continue doing for another four.

On my 75th birthday I got my first tattoo, and on my 80th I took a solo road trip around Texas to see some of my widely scattered family.

This year, I’m going on an RV road trip with my best friend of 40 years. On our return, I’ll be celebrating at pub party planned by my granddaughter and her wife.

I didn’t grow up celebrating birthdays. They weren’t all that special in our family. And after moving away from home, I often didn’t even tell the people I was around that it was my birthday.  

That didn’t change too much until I hit that 69 birthday.  Now I shout it from the roof tops – and on my blog: Hey, I survived another year.

Birthdays mean more, I think, when you accept that there are more of them behind you than ahead of you.

So, A great big Happy Birthday to all of you out there who fall into that category. Let’s all just keep moving.

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

Posted in aging, Journeys | 9 Comments »

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