Pat Bean's blog

Quotes From My Journal

November 12, 2025 by Pat Bean

**“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.

Posted in aging, Art, Journeys, Writing | 1 Comment »

Conversation with Myself

November 4, 2025 by Pat Bean

“I like nonsense. It wakes up the brain cells.” — Dr Seuss

Aging My Way

It’s been a month since you’ve posted a blog.

I’ve had company and then I was sick with the crud. Not covid because I took the test.

You found time to watch TV, listen to audible and spend endless hours scrolling on the computer.

Well, I have to admit that the scrolling was mostly a big waste of time … although I did figure out that those bumps on my right foot are what’s called ganglion cysts, and most importantly that they are harmless.

So why didn’t you stop scrolling?

I kept telling myself I should, but I just couldn’t seem to do so — maybe because scrolling doesn’t require brain power and my brain seemed to be turned off.

And exactly what is wrong with your brain?

It needed a vacation.

Is the vacation over?

Maybe … Hey! Want to see the latest photo of my canine companion Scamp. My friend Jean took it while he was sitting on my lap.

Posted in aging, Dogs | 2 Comments »

The Ace of Toilets

October 5, 2025 by Pat Bean

Road Trip: Day 1 Continued

Finally, back on track, heading east on U.S. 60, the designated scenic section that runs along the eastern border of the Tonto National Forest and through Fort Apache Indian Reservation between Globe and Show Low, Kim and I relaxed and enjoyed the scenery.

As one who wants to know where places get their names, I had looked up Show Low while planning our itinerary. What I discovered was that according to legend, the city’s unusual name resulted from a marathon poker game between Corydon E. Cooley and Marion Clark.

The two men were equal partners in a 100,000-acre ranch; however, the partners determined that there was not enough room for both of them, and they agreed to settle the issue over a game of Seven Up, with the winner taking the ranch and the loser leaving.

After the game seemed to have no winner in sight, Clark said, “If you can show low, you win.” In response, Cooley turned up the deuce of clubs (the lowest possible card) and replied, “Show low it is.” As a tribute to the legend, Show Low’s main street is named Deuce of Clubs.

From Show Low, we took Arizona State Route 77 to Holbrook, and then headed way off the beaten path, including a couple of miles of unpaved road to our night’s lodging, a small cabin with a glass front wall and glass roof called Star Gazer Cabin 1.

Kim, after my own fiasco I thankfully note, was the one who had made these reservations. It was a delightful outdoor treasure that both of us would have been happy with in our younger days.

The problem was that the small cabin sat atop a deck whose steps had no guard rail – and this old broad almost took a tumble just getting to the top of the deck. In addition, the place had only an outdoor toilet and both of us are at an age when using the john in the middle of the night is a repetitive thing.

I should also note that there was a sign that read: No peeing off the deck!

Now, Kim made me promise to write about what I did next; and that is after noting that the cabin was clean and the beds looked comfortable, I spotted a small waste basket and took it out to the deck to serve as my chamber pot for the night.

Thankfully, my traveling partner decided that maybe we should go back into town and find a more conventional place to spend the night. And a Best Western, with a nice clean indoor toilet, it was.

To be continued …

Posted in aging, Journeys, Travel | Tagged camping, road trips, Show Low AZ | 3 Comments »

Right Road Wrong Way

October 4, 2025 by Pat Bean

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 …

Posted in aging, Journeys, Lonely Planet Pathfinder, Travel, Writing | 1 Comment »

Looking For – and Finding – Joy

September 13, 2025 by Pat Bean

***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.

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Dogs, Journeys, Writing | Tagged joy | 5 Comments »

Life’s Purposes

September 8, 2025 by Pat Bean

***Scamp weighs 40 pounds, but he thinks he’s a lap dog. Here he is on my granddaughter’s lap. But when no one else is around he’s sharing my chair — or lap.***

“The purpose of life is a life of purpose.” – Robert Byrne

Aging My Way

As I was lying in bed, wide awake at 6 a.m. this morning, I realized there was not a dang thing that I really had to do when I got up – well, except household chores and there was no urgency in doing them.

I was pondering this when a body moved next to me. A minute or so later, a paw appeared on my chest, followed by a sweet kiss on the cheek. It was my canine companion Scamp’s way of telling me he was ready for his morning walk.

I’ve actually come to be grateful for this, even though it often happens while I’m still in the hands of the sandman. Taking care of Scamp, who refuses to do his business inside our small yard, gives me a purpose for getting up out of bed, getting dressed and getting moving.

I get a bit of exercise and usually some chit chat with one or two of my neighbors, usually also out walking their dogs. The other dogs greet Scamp in doggie ways that include a lot of butt sniffing and playful antics that end with their leashes tangled up.

We two dog owners laugh (the grouchy ones don’t approach anyone) and one of us untangles them.

I can’t think of a better way to start a day, especially for this 86-year old-broad who needs a purpose in her life.

Posted in aging, Dogs, Journeys | Tagged Life's purpose | 1 Comment »

A Warbler, A High Lake and Memories

September 6, 2025 by Pat Bean

“Be like the bird who, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing she hath wings.” – Victor Hugo

Aging My Way

Today’s Tucson Bird Alliance’s online newsletter featured a MacGillivray’s warbler, a small gray and yellow migratory bird that is currently passing through Southeastern Arizona.

It was one of the birds I specifically went hunting for during my early days of birding. I found it on July 1, 2004, at Tony Grove, a beautiful lake located at an altitude of 8,100 feet off Logan Canyon in Northern Utah.

I visited the grove many times after moving to the area for the first time in 1971, both for the area’s hiking trails and the opportunity to renew my sanity when life was stressful, as many of those earlier years were. And after an eight-mile roundtrip trail that led from Tony Grove to white Pine Lake, which I usually hiked, I always felt I could once again handle whatever life threw my way.

Nature has always done that for me.

But at 86, such a hike is out of the question. Both my balance and stamina have abandoned me. The best I can do is maybe a one-mile walk on level ground pushing my rollator before me and stopping at least a few times along the way.

Thankfully, I have my memories – and my stress level these days is pretty much zero. I also have lots of birds that visit my small patio yard. So, I’m going to keep an eye out for that MacGillivray’s.

Posted in aging, Birds, Favorite Hikes, Journeys, Lonely Planet Pathfinder, Quote for the Day | Tagged Tony Grove, Utah, White Pine Lake | Leave a Comment »

When Words Don’t Come

August 24, 2025 by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

I haven’t been blogging much lately. The truth is, I seem to have run out of words. That’s not surprising since this is my 1,639^th blog.

So, for today, since writing a blog tops my to-do list, I’m sharing some words of the Dalai Lama – ones that that have personally come in handy over the years:

Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship.

When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

Spend some time alone every day.

And remember that silence is sometimes the best answer – This is especially good advice for someone like me who has foot-in-mouth disease. I should have followed it a lot more than I did.

Finally, to add to these, I would simply say it’s good to laugh a lot, particularly at yourself. What would you add?

Posted in aging, Art, Journeys | Tagged dalai lama | 2 Comments »

The Power of a Book

August 9, 2025 by Pat Bean

***Just a small rock detail I captured during a hike along Mesa Trail in Canyonlands National Park in 2011. — Photo by Pat Bean***

Aging My Way

I’m currently reading Ann Zwinger’s Wind and Rock: The Canyon Lands of Southeastern Utah. It’s a landscape that I spent many hours exploring when I lived in Northern Utah, back when hiking was part of my life.

The book is one of more than 20 on natural history that Ann wrote before she died in 2014. Another one is Down Canyon, which is about her rafting trip through the Grand Canyon in the mid-1990s. I read it after my own 1990 trip through the canyon, but before a second adventure rafting the Colorado through the canyon in 1999, which was a 60^th birthday present to myself.

The two trips were entirely different: The first was for the pure adventure and thrill of the river’s wild rapids. The second for the experience of the canyon itself. I couldn’t help but be influenced in how I saw it because of Ann’s detailed descriptions in Down Canyon of the little things that she saw as much a part of the canyon as the river itself.

Her book made me more aware of the whistle of a canyon wren, which I sometimes awoke to in the mornings, and such things as the orange globemallow and blue penstemon wildflowers that added color to the canyon floor.

Meanwhile, I’m reading Wind and Rock because in late September, I will once again be driving through southern Utah, through places like the Grand Staircase-Escalante Monument, Garden of the Gods and Lake Powell. I suspect Ann’s book will once again have an influence on how I see the red-rock landscape as we drive through it.

Books are magical. Don’t you agree?

Posted in aging, Books, Journeys | Tagged southern utah | Leave a Comment »

Just The Facts, Please

July 14, 2025 by Pat Bean

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.

Posted in aging, Journeys, Writing | Tagged Brazosport Facts, mistakes | Leave a Comment »

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“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

Pat Bean is a writer, avid birder, hiker and passionate nature observer with wanderlust in her soul. She spent nine years living and traveling in a small RV. She now lives in Tucson with Scamp, a rescue who was supposed to be a Schnauzer mix but turned out to be a Siberian Husky-Shih Tzu mix who is as stubborn as his owner, her granddaughter says. She was also a journalist for 37 years, and can be reached at patbean@msn.com
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