Getting old: On a positive note …

[If you received this via email, may I suggest that you click on the title right above this line, which will take you to the website version? The formatting (especially of pictures) works a lot better on the website than in email]

Recently, I’ve had a bunch of those “I wish I weren’t getting old” moments. Small things, mostly. Wondering whether the next car I buy will be my last. Noticing, again, limitations on my activities. Actually completing one of those online questionnaires that tell you your personal expected age span. Finding myself saying (out loud or silently) the things I thought only cranky old ladies said … which pretty much puts me in the class of cranky old ladies. None of this is dramatic stuff, but collectively, moments like these can get me in a bad spot about aging, a place I really prefer not to be. And usually, I’m not. Usually, I’m quite content with my status as an old woman. I realize that I’ve had and continue to have a good, full, varied life—with its wrinkles, to be sure (no pun intended), but very good on balance. But sometimes that part slips my mind.

So I was really pleased when I came across two articles that reminded me of some of the "gifts" of aging—specifically, of aging brains (like mine). I suspect I’m not the only person who sometimes grumbles to myself about the rapidly passing years, so I thought I’d pass these along as an antidote. After all, it’s spring(ish)! The birds are singing and making babies in the tree outside my study (well, they were right before I took the picture below …. trust me), and the trees are all abloom along my walks. It’s a good time for some inspiring reading!

 

The first piece, called “The Science of Older and Wiser,” presented an interesting perspective on wisdom—something we often attribute to old people but that’s rarely well defined. In this case, researchers have shown that although thinking as it’s usually measured may be slower among older folks, it’s also more complex and more nuanced. In other words, old people may reach conclusions more slowly, but the conclusions we reach are richer, more likely to take into account the complexity of situations, the implications of possible answers, and even—I especially love this part—the human (humane) costs and benefits of our answers. Some even call this last part “compassion.” Now that’s a depiction of an aging mind that I find totally lovely—old people give more careful, complex, and humane thought to their conclusions. What a welcome change from the depiction of aging as a period of inevitable cognitive decline!

The second article, “The Older Mind May Just Be a Fuller Mind,” was equally uplifting. Now, I am aware, as many of my friends are, of having more trouble finding information that I thought was well learned and neatly stored in my brain. Sometimes it’s words or names, sometimes it’s locations or travel routes. Often it’s whole ideas (“Now, how did that splash-protection shield for my garden work last year?”). The standard reaction to these experiences is to label them as “senior moments”—a sort of quasi-flippant way to dismiss them and move on. But behind the chuckle is often, at least for me, an “oh, no” moment (“Is this evidence of old-age cognitive slowing?”). But this article gave me a whole new frame. It seems that recent research suggests that what looks like forgetfulness may just be a matter of data overload. Older people have far more experiences to sift through, so finding the particular word or thought can be more challenging. Of course!

This concept reminds me of old-time library card catalogs—row upon row of little wooden drawers filled with small cards, all organized alphabetically by title (one set of drawers) and by author (another set). No wonder we can’t immediately come up with the word for rubber boots!

And here’s another fascinating part of this research. It seems that most studies of cognitive functioning use value-neutral words—they do this intentionally so that the emotional associations of a word don’t bias whether it’s recalled or not. But it turns out that as people age, their associations become increasingly positive. Which is a good thing, in my book. Ask me about happy times, and I can generate more words to describe those times than I can if you ask me to recall bad times. It’s called “the age-related positivity effect”—so how can I not feel positive about it?

It’s good for me to have things like this tap me on the shoulder occasionally, because plenty of things in our culture tell us that all the really good stuff belongs to the young, and aging is just a slide into boredom and disengagement. I know better, and I’m grateful for reminders like these.

After all, with so much information to sift through and such nuanced thinking to deal with, these things can easily slip my mind.

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2014. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post.

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Ooops! Correction for "Somethin' About Lulu"

In the blog I posted earlier this evening, I made an unfortunate (but hopefully not irretrievable) mistake. Somethin' About Lulu is performing at Swallow Hill in Denver on Friday, May 9 (not on May 5, as I said earlier).

And now you have two blogs encouraging you to go hear them.

Two things you should do

This post may sound like total shilling, but I want to tell you about a couple of things that I’m excited about—either of which, I’m convinced, would brighten almost anyone’s day. (Provided you’re in the Denver area. Otherwise … maybe you could travel?) Neither of them has anything whatsoever to do with me—except that I think they’re grand things to do. One of them will require some fairly prompt attention if you want to do it. The other, you can postpone for a while … but not too long.

OK, first, and most urgent, a local band that I’ve written about here before, “Somethin’ about Lulu,” will be playing at Swallow Hill in Denver in early May. This is a group of three women who met in Resonance (the chorus I volunteer with) and who have now been playing together for a few years. Their tag line is “harmony and hilarity,” and both fit. Their music is just a treat—some of it funny (“Ballad of Melba Rose and Reba Fay”), some reflective (“Crocus in the Snow”), some spicy (“Mustard”), some sensitive and moving (“May I Suggest”). Besides, these women are inspirational as performers. They are visible, outspoken reminders that women “of a certain age”—i.e., women in mid-life—can initiate a new undertaking, create a new forum for their ideas and their talents. And they can do it with music and banter that is unapologetically feminist, outright lesbian/bi, and frankly fun.  

Clearly, I love this band, and I hope you will too. To me, they’re a musical delight and also a model for any of us who thinks it’s impossible to move (literally or figuratively) from garage band to performers on the stage of Swallow Hill based on the merits of your skills and the power of your own enthusiasm. So go. See if you agree. Somethin’ About Lulu will be at Swallow Hill in Denver for one night only, Friday, May 9. 

If you can go, do. I promise it’ll be a treat—and also good for your soul.

… and, on a totally different plane …

There’s an exhibition about the Maya at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science that’s well worth a visit if you’re curious about history and culture and various visions of reality. I went last week with a friend, and I loved it. It’s a really extensive exhibit, with lots of hands-on components that are the stuff (at least for me) of a fun as well as an informative trip to the museum. Fortunately, we were able to go early on a weekday and thereby avoid huge crowds. So we actually got to fiddle with many of the gizmos. For instance, I got to create a card showing the Maya version of my birthdate, which you can see on the right.

It's so interesting to imagine this complex civilization just down the continent from us, whose science (especially astronomy) was extremely advanced, yet it was virtually invisible to us until just recently. Much of what we now know about this culture has been learned in last several years, since advanced aerial detection techniques were able to identify vast complexes of buildings and roads. It was all so deeply buried in these remote, inaccessible jungles that we had no idea much of it even existed. Once it was found, folks set about trying to decipher the complicated system of symbols or "glyphs" written on pillars and alters, like those shown here, and on bark pages that detailed three complex calendars covering several thousand years before and several thousand years after Mayan culture existed.

For instance, they figured out that the second (relatively clear) glyph in the section of column shown below represents birth. The four dots and the vertical bar together represent the number nine, and the human-like figure to their right represents a child. Nine followed by a child = birth. Amazing, huh? I can’t begin to fathom how scientists have managed to decode these messages, but I know it makes me want to come back for another lifetime, this time as an archaeologist. (I admit to similar fantasies about coming back as an astrophysicist, a geologist, and maybe a linguist).

Anyway, there was so much to see that our old and tired bodies won out over continuing curiosity, so it will require a second trip. My recommendation is that you go pretty soon so that you, too, have time to go back for part 2. It’s here until August 24, but be forewarned: in the summer, the museum is full of kids doing summer educational camps, and you may not get a turn at the birthdate machine.

Music and museums. Two ways to keep your mind engaged without resorting to Luminosity. Nothing against Luminosity, but how can a computer program compete with harmony, hilarity, and the Maya long-count calendar?

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2014. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post. 

If you got this by email, you need to go to the actual blog to comment (do that by clicking on the title of this particular post). To comment on this post, click on "No comments" (or "2 comments" etc.) below. Comments from "anonymous" welcome.

Falling stars

As the upcoming Resonance concert* approaches, the talk list has carried a lot of discussion among chorus members about the meaning of some of the songs and some of the lyrics. Some of this discussion has focused on poetic descriptions of nature—the meaning of phrases like "orange sticks of the sun" and "ponds ... like black cloth on which are painted islands of summer lilies." Another, but related, thread has explored the relationship between ourselves and nature—specifically the notion that we humans are responsible for great damage done to nature through our own acts. Especially, I have to say, the acts of the wealthiest and most powerful humans. Which includes (at least most of) us.

To me, these two topics seem connected. They are linked by their attention to the two sides of our (ambivalent) relationship with the natural world. On the one hand, we cherish and celebrate nature in all her wild glory. And on the other, we seem driven not to cherish but to claim, tame, and own nature's bounty. The reverence is seen in our striving to find words that can capture nature's magnificence. The sense of dominion is seen in our tendency to ignore even the messages so clearly written in melting ice caps and rising temperatures, in displaced and vanished species and increasingly frequent extreme weather events telling us, shouting at us, that our relationship with the planet is in deep trouble, and we bear the responsibility for that trouble. In the past few weeks, I've come across several articles about this general domain that seem particularly compelling. Which is to say that it's hard for me to imagine that we wouldn't be compelled by these stories to at least think about our responsibility vis-à-vis the planet. (If you harbor any doubt about that responsibility, check out the most recent report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.) 

So, three stories that might give us all pause ...

The first story may seem obscure at first glance, but not so much when you consider the implications. The basic story is that scientists recently discovered a 30,000-year-old virus preserved in the Siberian permafrost. Since this virus apparently infects only single-cell organisms, it's not a direct risk to humans. Still, this finding raises the possibility that as the climate warms, ancient viruses of other sorts might emerge that could infect humans. Consider, for example, what might happen if ancient Neanderthal viruses melted out of the thawing permafrost (or not-so-permafrost). Our immune systems haven't evolved to deal with these archaic viruses, so humans could be at huge risk. This could be a mighty high price to pay for our refusal to notice what we're doing to the planet.

A second story might also seem remote from most of us—in space if not in time—but it turns out not to be. We've heard for years that glaciers and polar ice are melting at increasingly rapid rates—faster, even, than the rate predicted by most climate change models. Glaciologists have recently suggested that one of the factors leading to this rapid melting is small particles of dust and soot that darken the ice and snow. The darker color absorbs more heat, thereby increasing the speed of melting. One source of this "dark snow" is distant forest fires. And, to take the next step, we know that the overall pattern of increasing temperatures and increasingly frequent and severe wildfires is associated with climate change and with human incursions into wildland areas. Again, our role in the spiral of increasing damage to the earth is not hard to spot.

Finally, the recent tragic mudslide in Washington State provides another cautionary tale. In this circumstance—as in situations where wildfires claim lives and property in the wildland-urban interface or floods do the same near bodies of water—we have chosen to locate our lives in the paths of danger, even as we exacerbate that danger by our own actions. In the case of the Washington slide, a major landslide had been predicted in this location for some time—in fact, this same hill had slid several times in the recent past. Yet, questionable logging practices continued, and folks continued to live in this lovely valley at the beautiful foot of this precarious hill. As if we weren't at risk. As if we weren't responsible—either for what might happen (the "act of nature") or for how we deal with known "natural" risks. In this case, as in many, we can add to the (perhaps naive or misinformed) denial of danger on the part of homeowners the persistent, intractable politics of avarice and greed: the fear that land will lose value if you tell people it’s dangerous. And the equally obstreperous egocentrism of the libertarian call for freedom from government regulation. Just how large a role is played by these forces was recently documented in a story about political obstacles to landslide mapping that underlines again our collective role in all this.

There's a line in one song, "Requiem," that refers to our having “fallen from grace.” One chorus member suggested that this "fall" may lie in our failure to be proper stewards of the marvelous planet we're privileged to inhabit. When I read her comment, I agreed immediately and wholeheartedly—and perhaps self-righteously. Still, as I reflect on this now, I’m reminded of my own easy disregard for the environmental costs of my daily activities, of my tendency to ignore some personal violations of that stewardship when convenience beckons. Or to write off some such acts (unnecessary driving) by appeals to my conscientious attention to other areas (recycling CFL light bulbs). Even though I know full well that I am, in fact, responsible for both acts.

As I wander around in this topic, I keep thinking about the surprising connections among apparently disparate elements of our experience. I think of the connection between fires in Colorado and ice melt in the Arctic. Between 30,000-year-old viruses and future health threats, linked by the 200-year-old industrial revolution. I think of a town buried or burned or flooded in a slide or wildfire or storm surge—nature thrown off balance in the wake of individual convictions and collective policies based on misinformation, disinformation, and monetary myopia. And I also think of the connection between nature and ourselves. Which is actually an absurd thing to say, now that I think about it, since we are, after all, part of nature.

And with this, I return to the stars. I wrote about this before, and it comes back to me often: We are all—every virus, person, creature, plant, rock, snowfield, and planet, every flame and slide and flood—made of the stuff of stars. Maybe if we could just remember that, we’d treat one another and the planet better.

But we’d have to remember it. Really.

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*For details about this concert, check out the recent blog on the topic here.

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2014. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post.

To comment on this post, click on "No comments" (or "2 comments" etc.) below. Comments from "anonymous" welcome.