2019 Moments

Dear George, 

I planned to write a Christmas letter so I went to my daily diary and made notes on various happenings of major or minor significance.  I seem to have gotten lazy, so, rather than composing a real letter, I decided to just type out some of the listings.  A lot more happened in 2019, of course, but these items capture the flavor of our lives (a pretty good year).

Love,

Dave

SELECTED 2019 DIARY ENTRIES: 

1/5: Pianist Kiril Gerstein was the soloist at the symphony.  

1/7: My blood sugar was 99 today, the first time in the normal range for months. 

1/16: We went to the photography exhibition by Eugene Atget and Berenice Abbott at the Taft Museum.  

1/26: When Katja called me on my cell phone, I told her I was in suburban Finneytown, but actually I was upstairs.  

1/26:  At the doctor’s office the nurse asked Katja if I was her father.  

1/31: We were sad to watch the final Netflix episode of Riverdale, our nightly fix.  

2/3: The New England Patriots defeated the Los Angeles Rams 13-3 in the lowest scoring Super Bowl ever. 

2/15: We toured the new Holocaust Center at Union Terminal with an OLLI class.

2/27: Our “Standing Up to Contemporary Poetry” teacher revealed that he had bladder cancer, much to everyone’s sorrow.   

3/4: Katja had successful hand surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome and her trigger finger.  

3/4: We went to an inspiring poetry reading by Mary Ruefle at UC. 

3/11: I tripped at the liquor store parking lot and, protecting the booze I was carrying in my arms, landed flat on my nose on the edge of the curb.  

3/13: I skipped my gym workout and my zumba class because of my banged-up bloody face.  

3/18:  Much to my annoyance, the insurance company said we had to have the oak tree trimmed over our front porch.  

3/23: The Art Museum’s “Paris in 1900” exhibition was wonderful.  

4/1: I went to my first meeting of my new Underground Writers group.  

4/8: Tiger Woods won the Masters.  

4/10: We were happy to visit Fiona at the zoo, all 1000 lbs. of her. 

4/20: On our New York City vacation at Ami and Bruce’s Katja attended the afternoon and evening performances of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child ($200 per session) while I people-watched in Times Square.  

5/6: Donna, visiting from Nashville, stayed with us and attended the closing on her Covedale house. 

5/6: Star Motors paid us $500 for our Trailblazer SUV which Katja had bought for $38K in 2003 to transport our sheepdogs here and there.   

6/3: James Holzhauer’s Jeopardy winning streak came to an end after 32 consecutive victories and $2,462,216 in prize money.  

6/8: Visiting NOLA, I went with J, V, and L on an excursion to the Mississippi gulf coast, visited the Walter Anderson Museum in Ocean Springs, and swam in the gulf with little fish jumping all around us.  

6/24: My Advanced Poetry instructor encouraged me to try to be more poetic . 

7/14: Novak Djokovic defeated Roger Federer 7-6, 1-6, 7-6, 2-6, 13-12 in 4 hours and 57 minutes in the Wimbledon Finals.

7/15:  I had laser surgery to remove a film from my right eye.   

7/20: We were 20 minutes late to the Cincinnati Opera production of Porgy and Bess and had to sit in the back row initially, but it was still wonderful.  

7/22:  Our king-sized bed collapsed in the middle of the night but I successfully repaired it with cement blocks in the morning.

7/22:  Despite my opinion that we only needed one car, Katja went ahead and bought a new Honda CR-V.  

7/22:  Katja treated me to a birthday dinner at Seasons 52.  I had wild Alaska salmon (yum).  

7/25: We rode the Skyglide at the Ohio State Fair, then walked at least a mile, searching (successfully) for the Bloomin’ Onion booth.  

8/5: Visiting from NOLA, our son J and grandkids V and L took me along to go swimming at the immense Sunlite Pool at Coney Island.  

8/5:  Our granddaughter V rode on the most terrifying ride of all times at the Boone County Fair while the rest of us watched.   

8/12: Katja and I attended the funeral of her CABVI supervisor, colleague, and friend Kathy Roberts. 

8/12: Thanks to gifted tickets from Paula and Frank, we enjoyed watching Simona Halep and Stefanos Tsitsipas at the W&S Open Tennis Tournament in Mason.   

8/19: I accidentally call-blocked the phone numbers for Katja’s cell and her friend Eleanor’s landline.  

8/26: Katja and I enjoyed our 59th wedding anniversary at Jean-Robert’s Table. 

9/2: I went to the Brookville flea market in rural Indiana with Phyllis, saw lots of red “Keep America Great” hats, and bought a Sudoku book for $1.  

9/2:  We enjoyed a joint anniversary dinner outing with the Minkarah’s at Orchids.  

9/16: I went camping at Miami Whitewater Forest, got nervous when no one else was in the vicinity (except possible serial killers).  

10/13: I was surprised to discover in the Linton Chamber Music program that Katja and I are now patrons, having donated some unstated amount between $1500 and $4999.  

10/14: Jennifer and Brian’s dog Baxter, who was staying with us, escaped through the back door, and Katja had to chase him down the block despite her lower back pains.  

10/21: We thought that CCM’s production of 42nd Street was the best ever. 

10/24: I wore a black T-shirt to my Poetry Workshop so I could more dramatically read my newly written poem, “Black T’s”.  

11/7: Katja had shoulder replacement surgery which was complicated when the anesthesia damaged her right lung function and resulted in rehospitalization.   J had come up for the surgery and was a great help.  

11/21:  We reluctantly canceled our airline tickets to New Orleans for Thanksgiving because of Katja’s lung difficulties..  

12/2: I went with Katja to see the Met Opera cinema broadcast of Akhnaten at the Oakley Cinemax, enjoyed it.

12/9: Katja and I celebrated her birthday at Orchids at Palm Court (Katja, lamb; me, monkfish).  

12/13: The endocrinologist told Katja there was no sign of a recurrence of thyroid cancer.  

12/16:  Having relied on Donna’s hair styling for a long time, I got my first haircut at a barber shop in 15 years at SuperCuts ($10). 

12/17: My line dancing instructor posted a video of our class on Facebook, and I was the only one going in the wrong direction.  

12/18: The cardiologist said my heart was doing fine but that I’d put on a few pounds.  

12/18:  We watched off and on as the House of Representatives impeached Trump.  

12/22:  We went to “Treasures of the Spanish World” at the Art Museum for the third time. 

12/25: We had Xmas dinner with the Minkarah family at the Dupree House.  

12/29: The Bengals got their second win of the year, defeating Cleveland, 33-23.  A happy ending despite tying for the worst year in franchise history (2-14).  We will cheer for the Packers and the Saints in the playoffs.

Tis the Season...

Dear George, 

Christmas brings back lots of memories.  Here are some photos that my dad took to commemorate the occasion during our growing up years in the 1940’s and 50’s.    

Here are my siblings, Peter, Vicki, and Steven on the living room window seat at river house.  Steven is very happy with his fine new cowboy outfit, Vicki’s in good spirits, and Peter is absorbed with a Christmas toy.  

We loved getting toys from Santa — here an Action Target Game — and new playthings kept us absorbed for weeks and months on end.  

A model train was about as magnificent as one could imagine.  Engineers are Steve, myself, and Peter (looking bewitched).  

Christmas was the main annual occasion for our extended family get-together with my cousins, aunts, and uncles.  This photo is from about 1958.  The back row from the left: Steven, myself, Vicki, my cousin Thor, my Uncle Kent, and Peter.  In the front my cousins Kurt and Stewart in vests (I’m not sure which is which), my cousin Ann, my cousin John at the far right.  Great excitement for the kids.

Here is another pic of cousins: Thor, Johnny, Peter. myself as Santa holding Ann, Steven, Vicki, and one of our Irish Setters, probably Micky.   

A festive occasion for the adults too.  Twin brothers Karl (at the left) and Kent, Aunt Millie (Kent’s wife), and their son Thor.  Karl was a bachelor, and he showered family members with grand presents.  Fancy gowns for the women one year and an atomic energy kit for me. 

My parents had a wonderful friendship group, and there were lots of house-to-house visits during the holiday season.  These are the O’Hara’s in our front yard: Michael, Jean, Kiera, Terry, Michael Dennis, and, covering his eyes, Patrick Sean.

We also visited lots of friends.  The Caleys at Northwood Cove had a wonderful igloo which we were never able to duplicate at our house.  Steve and Tom Caley are on the roof; I’m on the ground.

Our house on the river was a grand place to celebrate the holiday season.

Love,

Dave 

Three Poems From Childhood

Dear George,

I’ve been busy this autumn quarter with my OLLI writing courses, “Poetry Writing Workshop” and “Advanced Poetry Writing”.  This helps to keep blood flowing in my brain.  Childhood experiences are one topic I regularly draw upon.  Here are a few that stood out to me.

Love,

Dave

A Boy’s Dream  

Every Sunday my Grandpa Guy

gave me a new tin soldier

Heroes of heroes, strong and brave

with their rifles, bazookas, Tommy guns, swords

Only five, I soon commanded a mighty army

a force capable of defeating the Nazis

We fought fierce battles for hours on end 

Then one day my parents

took me to a restaurant 

where the owners had on display

an incredible machine

enclosed in a glass case 

Hundreds of inter-connected parts

moving together up and down

back and forth 

whirling about in circles

I watched as if hypnotized 

and daydreamed about it for weeks afterward 

If only I could find the right metal pieces

I could surely build a machine like that

Everywhere I went 

I watched for scraps of metal 

Then the idea came to me 

My tin soldiers

All those heads, arms, legs

So many little metal pieces

I could break them off

fit them together

and use them to build my machine

The hardest decision I’d ever faced

I did love my tin soldiers

But I loved that machine more than anything 

Alone by myself in Grandpa’s living room

I threw the tin soldiers as hard as I could

against the flowered wallpaper

but they were too solid to break

So I got Grandpa’s hammer

and smashed every one of them into pieces 

I spread the parts out on the rug

and began putting them together

These two, no those two

maybe these other ones 

A sudden uneasiness

Then panic  

Then total devastation

None of the pieces fit together 

Not a single pair

My world came crashing down

What was I thinking? 

What had I done?  

The pile of broken limbs and torsos lay before me

I tried putting the soldiers back together

but that didn’t work either 

I cried for hours

Fifty years later I told my dad

about my idea of building a machine 

He was incredulous

“We thought you hated your grandfather”

No, that’s not right

I loved my grandfather

I just had a wrong idea

* * *

Stuff We Learned As Boys 

I did my childhood in the 1940s

World War Two and its aftermath 

My dad left our family for the Navy 

But I still learned a lot about being a man

The major lesson

Men either kill or get killed 

We observed this, of course, in the Movietone News 

Ships sinking, planes on fire, corpses in a trench 

But also at the Saturday matinee

Swordsmen, gangsters, pirates 

G-men, Apaches, pygmies with poison darts   

We children spent our leisure hours playing military games 

Or cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians

I owned a six-shooter, a luger, a .45, a rifle with a bayonet

A hunting knife, a jackknife, a Bowie knife, a machete

Loads of cap pistols, water pistols, a machine gun that shot ping pong balls 

Not to mention my bow and arrows

When we weren’t busy shooting at each other

We played contact sports

Basketball, football, boxing, wrestling

Determining who could triumph over whom

Who were winners, who were losers

Men, we concluded, don’t show emotion

Tough guys dish out pain and can take it

Being weak is the worst sin of all

Looking back, this was not ideal preparation 

for marriage, family, parenthood, friendship

Perhaps it was useful for pro football or the army

* * *

The Time That God Nearly Passed the Test

My family wasn’t very churchy

so I depended on my childhood chums

for my religious upbringing

Mostly Catholic 

they taught me about the saints

the ten commandments

errant priests and altar boys

rituals of the Mass 

and, of course, Heaven and Hell

I wound up confused

in doubt of God’s existence

even though my chums told me 

I was wacko 

and in danger of burning for all eternity.

One day

I decided to settle the matter

once and for all 

I shuffled a deck of Bicycle playing cards

closed my eyes

and said aloud

“God, if you exist

prove it to me by 

letting me draw

the six of clubs.”  

I held my breath

pulled a card at random from the deck 

turned it over slowly

and stared at……..

The Six of Clubs!

Probably the heavens thundered

blazing lights, the sound of trumpets.

I broke into a sweat.

Disoriented

barely able to breathe. 

After an hour of stupefaction

I picked up the deck of cards again. 

“God,” I said, “I have to give

you one more test.

Just to be sure. 

If you let me draw the nine of hearts

I will absolutely believe in you forever.   

I promise.”

Then I drew the card

held my breath

turned it over anxiously

and…..it was not the nine of hearts.  

“That’s it,” I said to myself.  

“Nobody there.” 

But later I reconsidered. 

Perhaps He was insulted

and felt it beneath Him 

to continue going along with a 

thirteen-year-old boy’s reckless whims.  

“I proved Myself to you 

when you asked Me

and you chose not to believe 

the word of God.

So be it.”  

From time to time 

I still wonder about that.  

Whatever the case, it was certainly 

a peak religious moment

and it did make me think about miracles.  

  

A Plug for the Golden Years

Dear George, 

I wonder when I first ran across the notion of “The Golden Years”.  Maybe sometime in my twenties.   From the outset it struck me as a lie, manufactured to delude old people into feeling better about the horrors of aging.  Recently I found out that the phrase was actually coined for a 1959 advertising campaign for Sun City, Arizona, the nation’s first large-scale retirement community.  So it was a sort of lie after all.

Now that I’m well into the Golden Years, I find myself reevaluating the matter.  I turned 82 last July, but the early eighties, so far, have no connection to the frightening fantasies I harbored as a young adult.  My life, like that of many of my age-peers, is similar to our earlier adult years, but also more desirable in a variety of ways.  My opinions about aging have been shaped a lot by my experience in OLLI classes at the university where most of my classmates are in their seventies and beyond.  These persons tend to be bright, inquisitive, engaged, and enthusiastic.  Nothing like ageist stereotypes.  While we all know that the final years of life can involve decline and disability, I’m more struck by the positives that are associated with growing older (associated with retirement as much as with biological age per se).  Here are some of the pluses that I associate with the Golden Years.    

Completion.  I think that one wonderful thing about the 70s and beyond is that one has completed (or largely completed) many of their major life tasks.  For myself, I feel good about growing up in our family, my education, my career, marriage, parenting, many friendships.  Along with a sense of accomplishment, I’m no longer troubled by the strains that necessarily came along with these largely completed life roles.  A mixture of pride, relief, and contentment. 

Freedom from authority.  For most of the past decades of my of life I, like just about everybody, was subject to the dictates of parents, teachers, bosses, and other authority figures.  With a couple of exceptions (e.g., my wife and my doctor), these hierarchical relationships pretty much ended upon my retirement at age 71.  No orders, no supervision, no annual reviews, no performance monitoring.  I sleep late when I want to, pick activities I find pleasurable.  I’m largely in charge of my daily routine and, with that, comes a rewarding sense of control that was less evident in earlier life stages.   

Lowered stress.  I spent my career teaching and doing research in social psychology.  It was a good choice from me, but each year that I’m away from the workplace, the more I’m aware of how stressful my work world was.  I found classroom teaching to be anxiety-provoking.  Pressures for research and publication were a constant source of stress.  Managing relationships with a few dozen colleagues was often rewarding, but could also be unpleasant.   One of my work friends took early retirement and was convinced that it reduced his blood pressure and added ten years to his life.  I know the feeling.  It’s not that retired life is stress-free, but many earlier sources of pressure have lessened or vanished.

Less self-consciousness.    I’ve always been a rather shy, socially anxious person, though my sense is that this has decreased with age.  At this stage of life I have less need to create favorable impressions and am less concerned with what others think of me.  My sister commented a while back that I seem to have become more outgoing as I’ve gotten older, then added (tongue in cheek, of course) that that’s a regrettable development.

New Life Roles.  Being an older, retired person is a new life role, in and of itself, requiring problem-solving and creative adaptation.  Basically one is faced with the challenge of building a new life.  Being a grandparent is my most exciting and enjoyable new role, though less frequently in play for us because of geographical distance.

Wisdom and experience.  There’s probably a kernel of truth about wisdom being associated with seniorhood.  The older people are, the more things they’ve experienced, the more crises they’ve worked through, the more places they’ve been, and the more life stages they’ve traversed.  It’s kind of like visiting a museum.  By the end of childhood you’ve seen a couple of the galleries, but by your seventies or eighties you’ve gone through the whole place a couple of times. 

Growing old together.  Katja and I celebrate our 60th wedding anniversary this coming August.  Couples age and go through life stages just as individuals do.  We have both become more attuned to the hazards of aging and probably worry more about one another’s well-being than about ourselves.  I think we both appreciate that, and it makes for closer bonds.

Thankfulness.  Given average life expectancies in our society (currently about 79), I’m thankful to still be around, and I look at each passing day as a privilege and an opportunity.  A few setbacks or disabilities here and there are quite tolerable. 

Having written this, I’m feeling more enthusiastic about age-related matters.  In some respects, I find this the happiest time of life.  Of course it all depends.  Elderly persons may live in dire poverty, incur painful and life-threatening diseases, become disabled, be subject to elder abuse.  The “golden years” really refers to the post-retirement stage when individuals are relatively healthy and their activities are governed by their interests and desires rather than by health and safety concerns.   According to research summarized on webmd.com (2), the keys to a high-quality life after age 65 are good health, sufficient money, and finding one’s life meaningful.  Katja and I are doing o.k. on these dimensions (though health can bounce around a bit and meaning is sometimes elusive).  Here’s to our next adventure.

Love,

Dave 

SOURCES:

(1) rowleylegal.com.  “The Term ‘Golden Years’ Was Coined In 1959 As An Advertising Pitch For Sun City”  (Aug. 3, 2014) 

(2) webmd.com.  “What Makes the Golden Years Great?”  (May 31, 2007)

Thanks, World

Dear George,

We’ve been through a nervous three weeks following Katja’s complications from shoulder replacement surgery.  There’s nothing like losing the ability to breathe to make one appreciative of being alive.  While Katja still has an oxygen tank at home, she uses it a bit less each day, and we’re looking ahead to a full recovery.  Thanksgiving this year is an especially good time to reflect on all the good things in our lives, past and present. 

Thanks to Katja, first of all, whose has supplied most of the things that have made our lives enjoyable for the past 59 years. 

Thanks to our NOLA family, J, K, L, and V, who have helped make our senior years much more rewarding than we ever expected.  

Thanks to my parents for our extraordinary upbringing as kids and to my siblings with whom I’ve enjoyed my happiest times at our many family reunions at Farm.  

Thanks to a bevy of friends over the years who have generated much of our fun and frivolity.

Thanks to my Menominee High School teachers who gave me a solid grounding for moving on in the world and to Antioch College, a remarkable institution where I might have been the only Upper Peninsula graduate in history. 

Thanks to my graduate school mentors in social psychology, my university colleagues and grad students, and the university’s retirement plan which keeps us afloat.  

Thanks to my zumba and line dancing instructors who assist me each week in the battle against old age.  

Thanks to the OLLI program at the university where the poetry classes have given me a new avocation.  

Thanks to our Clifton neighborhood which makes us feel at home and keeps us well supplied with Skyline Chili and Graeters ice cream.    

In many ways we’re enjoying the most enjoyable time of our lives.  Relatively free of stress, entirely free of work pressures, no bosses or worries about “getting ahead”, and plenty of time to devote to enjoyable leisure pursuits.  That makes for a happy Thanksgiving.

Love,

Dave

Dreams and Life Stages

Dear George,

Like everyone, I’ve had recurrent dreams as long as I can remember.  Now, from the perspective of my elder years, what strikes me is how these have changed over time and how they reflected the particular life stage I was immersed in.  Here are some of the recurrent dreams that I recall most clearly.

Love,

Dave 

Childhood

My memories are fuzziest about my childhood dreams, but I do have a clear sense that they were usually scary.  Basically these were flight dreams in which I was in danger, terrified, and being chased by some powerful malicious entity.  Monsters, wild animals, Nazis, murderous criminals.  Sometimes this was in the forest.  I don’t think I usually got caught, mostly because the chase was so frightening that it woke me up. 

I haven’t had flight dreams for many many years, and I suspect they were particularly distinctive of childhood fears.  Being relatively small, weak, and vulnerable and being scared about a dangerous world.  This might have involved fears about parents, older kids, teachers, etc., but I suspect my flight dreams were especially fueled by comic books, Disney movies, and the weekly Saturday matinee cowboy, war, detective, and horror movies that we attended.     

Adolescence

I remember my most recurrent teenage dream very clearly, though it too is long gone.  In my waking life I had a part-time clerk job in my grandfather’s drugstore which required that I drive from our home in Menominee, Michigan, across the Hattie Street Bridge to the drugstore in Marinette, Wisconsin, the twin city where it was located.  The bridge was right next to the Menominee River dam where water came rushing down.   In my dream I was driving our family car across the Hattie Street Bridge when I suddenly discovered that the center section had collapsed.  Unable to brake in time, my car and I plummeted down into the rocks and white water to our destruction. 

I’ve always thought of this as my most creative dream.  A perfect symbolic representation of the anxieties connected with the perilous transition from adolescence to adulthood.  Clearly I feared I was doomed.  

College

I had the same recurrent dream as most other college students I’ve known.  It was finals week in the semester, and I suddenly discovered that I was accidentally registered for a course I’d never attended.  It was too late to withdraw, and I had to take the final exam if I had any hope of not failing.  I knew absolutely nothing about the subject matter.  The exam was starting in a couple of minutes.

There are lots of sources of anxiety during the college years, but constant evaluation and the threat of failure on examinations probably top the list.  

Early Career

My college exam anxiety dreams persisted for several decades, deeply rooted as they were.  However, once I became a classroom teacher, my student dream was gradually replaced by a complementary teacher dream.   Instead of a final exam, it was the first day of the semester, and I was notified by my department head that I was scheduled to teach a new class that I was totally unprepared for.  Like Nuclear Science or Chinese History.  The class was beginning in minutes, and I had to go in and bluff my way through.  In one variation of this dream, all of the students, one after the next, walked out of class during my lecture. 

It's interesting that students and teachers have pretty much the same dream.  I guess that higher education is fraught with tension, no matter which side you’re on.   

Later Career

Anxiety seems at the core of most of my dreams.  However, in middle age, perhaps the prime time of life,  I began having much more enjoyable,  anxiety-free dreams.  One version involved flying.  I would simply start waving my hands up and down, and then I would slowly rise upward to the ceiling or to the sky.  People watched in amazement.  An exhilarating, freeing feeling.  In another related version I would run at full speed along the sidewalk, then jump off the ground, and, amazingly, my momentum would carry me through the air for a city block or more.  I imagined myself breaking all of the records for the long jump at the Olympics. 

I see these as feel-good dreams in which I possessed special powers that were both unique and rewarding, including gaining recognition from others.  They came at a time when I felt in more control of my life – career, marriage, parenthood – and I apparently could afford to relax and enjoy my success. 

Retirement

Nowadays the dream that I have most often involves a return to anxiety, if not terror.  I suddenly recall that I had rented an expensive hotel room in another city a year ago and that I had brought all my books and other belongings and left them stored there.  I’d totally forgotten that I’d done that.  The current hotel bill was over a hundred thousand dollars, and I had only one day left in which to drive to the city and try to retrieve my belongings. 

I regard this as another age-related dream.  First, there is the sense of running out of time.  Second, what to do about an enormous number of belongings.   One of the things that worries me most in real life is what to do about the 60 years’ worth of stuff that Katja and I have accumulated and that fills our attic, basement, and storage room to overflowing. 

Postscript

For the most part, my dreams seems to mirror the central fears of my waking life.  What strikes me most is that changes in dreams follow changes in life roles.  Perhaps I will have a new recurrent dream in coming years.  It already makes me nervous to think about it.