Crone to the Bone Blogosphere

100 Year-old Man Completes Marathon

2011-10-18T07:50:00.000-07:00

Fauja Singh secured a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records on Sunday at the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon.
The 100-year-old accomplished an amazing feat, becoming the oldest person ever to complete a full-distance 42-kilometre marathon. It took Singh over eight hours to cross the finish line — more than six hours after Kenya’s Kenneth Mungara won the event for the fourth straight year — and he was the last competitor to complete the course. But his time wasn’t nearly remarkable as the accomplishment itself.

“Beating his original prediction, he’s overjoyed,” said coach and translator Harmander Singh. “Earlier, just before we came around the (final) corner, he said, ‘Achieving this will be like getting married again.’
“He’s absolutely overjoyed, he’s achieved his life-long wish.”

Although event workers dismantled the barricades along the finish line and took down sponsor banners even as Singh made his way up the final few hundred metres of the race, a throng of media, family, friends and supporters were there when Singh made marathon history.
And Singh, who only speaks Punjabi, also surprised himself. Through his interpreter, he said he had set a goal of finishing the race in about nine hours.

“He said he achieved this through the help of God but even God must be getting fed up of helping him,” Harmander Singh said, drawing chuckles from assembled media after the race.
Sunday’s run was Fauja Singh’s eighth marathon — he ran his first at the tender age of 89 — and wasn’t the first time he set a record. In the 2003 Toronto event, he set the mark in the 90-plus category, finishing the race in five hours 40 minutes and one second.
And on Thursday in Toronto, Singh — whose first name means soldier — broke world records for runners older than 100 in eight different distances ranging from 100 metres to 5,000 metres.

Singh, a five-foot-eight, 115-pound British citizen and vegetarian, looked tired and spent following the race and organizers gingerly assisted him to the post-event news conference. After receiving gentle massages to his legs and calf muscles as well as cups of water from members of his entourage, Singh leaned back on a couch and spoke little to start the news conference.

But a short time into it, he began looking remarkably relaxed and fresh with his hands clasped behind his head. Then, he abruptly sat up straight and with a smile, motioned for the microphone, obviously getting his second wind.
“He says he’s recovered now so he’s going to talk,” his translator said, again drawing laughter.

Affectionately dubbed the Turbaned Tornado, Singh began running roughly 20 years ago after losing his wife and child. The five-foot-eight centenarian said he’s happy to see more minorities taking part in such marathon events and is hopeful his next project will be participating in the torch relay for the 2012 London Summer Games.
Singh carried the torch during the relay for the 2004 Athens Games.

Race director Alan Brookes struggled to find the right words to describe Singh’s remarkable accomplishment.

“I’m speechless,” he said. “Fauja Singh is a remarkable human being.”

The Star

Unleash the Geezer!

2011-09-03T17:04:00.000-07:00

Why Geezer?

Why Geezer? Why would a fine arts gallery choose a name that conjures images of a grumpy old guy sitting on the front porch hollering, “get off my lawn”? Why use a moniker that brings to mind other harsh “z” words like gizzard, lizard, buzzard...? Wouldn’t it be better business - not to mention better manners - to choose a less offensive label than The Geezer Gallery?

Well, maybe. Besides being cleverly alliterative, Geezer Gallery is intended to be provocative. We want to provoke conversation and new ways of thinking about what it means to be an aging or “older” person in today’s world. We encourage people of all ages to engage in a dialogue about what a “geezer” is or can be.

A geezer in the U. K. is just a guy, the kind of fellow you might choose as a friend. (Prince William has been described as a “fine geezer.”) But in the U.S., geezer generally describes an old person - crotchety, slow-moving, and annoyingly no longer young. Male or female, “those old geezers” are perceived as a drain on society’s resources, a group whose productive days are long past.

Rather than a term of derision, we seek to redefine geezer as a term of strength, empowerment, and perhaps even endearment. Instead of a pejorative, geezer can become a rallying cry for all of us, regardless of chronological age, to embrace the creative forces which reside within.

Unleash the Geezer! ...at The Geezer Gallery.

Stylin' 70-Year-Olds

2011-07-21T12:12:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to a slide show of stylish 70-something's.

Grandma Agnes Baker-Pilgrim - The Natural Way: Indigenous Voices

2011-07-18T17:11:00.000-07:00

Elton John & Leon Russell perform Never Too Old on The View - October 21 2010

2011-07-18T15:46:00.000-07:00

Interview With Marc Freedman on the Midlife Crisis

2011-06-24T12:05:00.000-07:00

'The Big Shift' argues for a new life stage
The first time Marc Freedman used his AARP card, he was a 50-year-old with two small children, and it felt so weird he wondered whether the hotel clerk was going to accuse him of fraud. He survived the shock, but as he progressed further into his 50s, he noticed that he and his friends were struggling with a similar problem — a sense that one era of life was ending and another was beginning, and none of the traditional categories seemed to fit.

The irony is that Freedman, of all people, should have seen it coming. In his 30s he started Civic Ventures, an organization dedicated to helping people over 50 move into more meaningful work, and he's long been concerned about the mismatch between America's changing demographics and its static conceptions of life stages. When the modern idea of the "golden years" of retirement was created in the mid-20th century, average life expectancy was barely over 65, and those who lived beyond it were often not fit to keep working. But now average life expectancy is nearing 80, and many people approaching retirement age find that they're not ready to step aside.

As Freedman points out in his new book, The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife, our life stages — childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, midlife, old age — are not just reflections of life's natural seasons; they are social constructions that shape how we think about our lives. And as our social realities change, sometimes these categories fail to keep pace.

Freedman spoke with the AARP Bulletin about this problem, and what might be done about it.

Q. You say life stages don't just emerge, they're created. Why do we have to create life stages in the first place?

A. We do it to make society work better. We invent stages when a problem has developed with the people who are in a particular period. So we created adolescence when there were a lot of young people who needed the opportunity to mature before entering the adult world. We created retirement at a juncture when older people were seen as pitiable — too old to work, too young to die — and they needed a category to better serve their needs. And that's why we're going to need to create a category between midlife and old age.

Q. How does this actually happen?

A. In many ways it comes down to making a virtue of necessity. We are going to be a much older nation than we were. Large numbers of people are flooding into a period of life where they face confused identity, mismatched institutions and incoherent public policies. And we'll change because the existing arrangement no longer works. The idea of the 30-year retirement is simply unsustainable. Who can afford to retire for 30 years, and what society can afford to write off the most experienced quarter of its population when they still have so much left to contribute?

Q. Outliving your usefulness at age 60? It's absurd, really.

A. It is absurd. Last summer I gave testimony to the Senate Finance Committee. I'd just read an article by an economist saying the working-age population was defined as ages 15 to 59, and I'm looking around this panel of senators, and I realize there wasn't a single one of them that qualified as being working age. Everywhere you look you see these contradictions and oxymorons.

Q. Speaking of which: What do you mean when you say the midlife crisis might be more of a chasm than a crisis?

A. We have a dramatic sense in this country of the midlife crisis — that it means a reckless affair, a red sports car, a dramatic life upheaval — but the much more prevalent problem is that people are hitting their middle years realizing the work they've been doing has run its course and they're ready for something new. But getting from "what's left" to "what's next" is a daunting prospect, with very little help available. And I think many people feel that they're stuck between clinging to the familiar even if it's lost its appeal, or entering the abyss, which can be a terrifying prospect.

Q. And expensive.

A. Yes. The cost of transitioning to a new period of life — which might mean getting additional education, doing an internship, taking a sabbatical — is significant. There was an article in Time recently about baby boomers going to divinity school, and it had the story of a pediatric nurse who became an Episcopal priest — it cost her $100,000; she had to sell her house and her car to do it. There's a need to do a better job helping people save for this transition. The idea of having this big balloon payment of leisure at the end of life and trying to save for that is going to make sense for some people, but a lot of us would rather take at least half of that and distribute it across the life course so we have more opportunity for renewal and education.

Q. Explain what you mean by "posterity deficit."

A. Mary Catherine Bateson has this great line: "We're living longer and thinking shorter." As a society, we've become increasingly preoccupied with short-term profits, short-term benefits, short-term thinking. And now we're beginning to see the consequences. There was a wave of boomer commencement addresses a couple of years ago, in which the essential message was: "We're sorry. We're sorry that we're going to be the first generation to leave the world worse off than we found it." And the sequestering of older Americans is part of that problem. When you send people off to live in age-segregated villages to live a second childhood, you're essentially squandering what Erik Erikson called "generativity" — the natural impulse people have in late life to give back to future generations. When Erikson was close to death, he said the great sadness he felt was that we had lost a sense of future-mindedness as a country.

Q. Maybe the problem is that we think of the future strictly in terms of youth. What can older people contribute that younger people can't?

A. People moving into the encore years have experience that twentysomethings don't. But they also have fewer years ahead of them — and this has motivational implications. You ask different questions when you realize that the time ahead is finite; your priorities change. And many people now also have enough time and energy to do something with that unique perspective.

Q. Whereas before they might not have.

A. Right. In the past it was almost as if wisdom and experience were wasted on the old. By the time you reached the point where you'd figured things out and were motivated to focus on the most important things in life, you were too worn out to do anything about it. Maybe you could donate a park bench. But people now are in a position to live a legacy.

Q. So it boils down to experience and perspective?

A. No, it's really more than that. It's not just "experience" and "wisdom" that we're losing. We're also losing a vast potential source of creativity in society. There's growing evidence, for instance, that experimental innovators bloom later in life, and by systematically sending so many people to the sidelines, convinced that they're over the hill, we may have been writing off a whole swath of people who are prepared to do their best work.

Q. You tell the story of Meredith, who changes course in her 50s to become an environmental activist, and she says that making a change like that at that age "is like walking the high trapeze without a net." What's the difference between doing something like this at 55 and doing it at 25?

A. Meredith had to downshift in an extreme way to provide herself that net — she moved out of her expansive house and into a garage. At this stage of life, you have more financial obligations, and you also have higher expectations of comfort and security than you did when you were young. It's a more jarring transition.

Q. Which means it's not just a matter of economics, it's also about creating a different set of social expectations. Otherwise, people are all alone in this.

A. That's exactly it. You're without a net economically, especially when it comes to health insurance, mortgages, other obligations. But maybe even more important, you're without a net psychologically. There's an expectation that you work hard through your middle years, then you reach a certain level of achievement and you stay there until you disengage and retire … so to be starting out again at 55 or 60 or 65 requires an enormous amount of resilience and a thick skin.

Q. You write that we need "a whole new set of social institutions, market innovations, enlightened policy, and a revised culture." What do you think most needs to happen?

A. We need a gap year for grown-ups. And it will probably involve the same three elements that young people use in their transition to adulthood: education, internships and service. People need a period of renewal and exploration; they need time to develop new skills and explore possibilities. And they need to be able to do it without sneaking in the back door via internships meant for young people or raiding their children's college funds.

Glenn Hodges lives in Colorado.

A Gray Area? Rethinking Hair Norms

2011-05-28T17:44:00.000-07:00

Dr. Vivian Diller asked "We've had the generation gap and the gender gap. Are we ready to tackle the "gray" gap?"

Along with her question, Diller offers,
"Some "gray" facts:"

Graying is a natural phenomenon that comes with age as follicles at the base of the hair shaft lose melanin.
Graying is primarily genetically determined. We most often see gray when our parents and grandparents did.
Poor nutrition, Vitamin B and iron deficiency, thyroid problems, albinism, smoking and other environmental toxins may also contribute to graying.
Caucasians tend to start graying earlier (in their early 30s), than Asians (late 30s) and Afro-Americans (mid-40s).
While, on average, most people begin to gray between the ages of 30 and 40, white hair can appear at anytime. People who go gray before 40 are considered prematurely gray.

...and some, "Facts about our graying population:"

More than 40 percent of Americans will have some gray by age 40.
If people didn't color their hair, half of our current population would be 50 percent gray.
More than 50 percent of women color their hair. Approximately 15 percent of men do, although some say many more men keep it hidden.
There are 78 million Baby Boomers in the U.S. The oldest turned 65 this year and 10,000 more will reach that milestone every year for the next 19 years.
Last year alone, approximately 2 billion dollars were spent on women's hair coloring products and $150 million on men's.
The average woman spends $330 a year on coloring her hair.

"To gray or not to gray?"

"It is just one of many choices that adults face as they age in the midst of a youth-driven culture. Eager for authenticity, more women are celebrating their silver locks rather than hiding them, while image-conscious men are choosing to color theirs. Another gender divide seems to be crumbling."

Vivian Diller, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer and consultant in New York City.

Congratulations to The Style Crone

2011-03-31T12:41:00.000-07:00

Judith Boyd, The Style Crone,

won Denver's weekly, Westword's

"Best Style Blog for Beautiful Old Ladies - 2011"

award.

She deserves it.

Her blog is beautiful, clean, easy to read...

and very stylish...

as she is.

Photo credit

The Style Crone is a real woman... a real crone... with a husband who has cancer. She writes, "negotiat(ing) this difficult journey, I find a powerful form of art and expression in my daily conceptualizing and personal presentation of my own form of body art, which I hope to share by chronicling my ‘displays’ on this blog."

Her blog is a blend of beauty and brains and internal brawn - the kind that says when the going gets tough, the tough "embrace and adorn."

Strength training and exercise improves aging

2011-03-21T10:30:00.000-07:00

I agree it is inevitable that we will get older. However the loss of strength, endurance, flexibility and balance are another story.

Age does not have to get us down. We can control, maintain and continue to improve our physical qualities with regular exercise, proper nutrition and rest.

I hope you will stand next to me on the front line, in the battle, for optimal health and quality of life forever.

Most older individuals are aware that they need regular exercise, but many dismiss it as an activity only for the young.

That is absolutely not the case, because everyone can work at their own level.

Weight training or resistance training is one of the few types of exercises that can slow, and even reverse, the declines in muscle mass, bone density and strength that were once considered consequences of aging.

I challenge you, with your doctor’s permission of course, to consider weightlifting.

People shouldn’t experience pain while lifting weights, but it is normal to feel some soreness the next day.

Experts believe that as muscles are challenged by the resistance of weight, some of their tissue breaks down; as the muscles heal, they gradually increase in strength and size.

Both are valuable benefits that will improve our metabolism, keep us active and dependent as we age.

People who have been inactive for long periods are at high risk for falls, because their muscle tone is weak. Flexibility and balance are typically limited.

To reduce the risk of falls and injury, people who haven’t been active can strengthen their legs, arms and trunk muscles with three to four weeks of weight training to prepare them for walking and engaging in more vigorous activity.

Since aerobic activity and strength training are important for optimal health, it makes sense that we must do them both on a regular basis.

Typically 20 to 60 minutes of aerobic activity is standard three to five days a week, and weight training should be done two to three times a week.

It is very important that you perform stretches along with your program before, during and after each session.

It will increase your range of motion, reduce soreness, and help muscle recovery.

In general, as we grow older, our muscle fibers shrink in number and in size and become less sensitive to messages from the central nervous system.

This contributes to a decrease in strength, balance and coordination.

Please remember this does not have to happen to you, because these losses don’t happen because of your age, it depends more so on your activity or lack there of. It is totally up to you.

You can make the decision right now to start a program that allows you to take control over this very important part of your life.

So to all my adults who are 40, 50, 60 and 70 plus years old, keep up the good work. Exercise and strength training is absolutely for us all.

Until next time, stay forever young at heart, and please go out and make it a great fitness day.

By Reggie Grovey
The Shawnee News-Star.

Rachel Sussman: The world's oldest living things

2011-03-16T16:18:00.000-07:00

Identical twin sisters to celebrate 100th birthday

2011-01-13T08:47:00.000-08:00

'I don't feel a century old,' one of the L.A.-area residents says. 'I probably don't feel any older than in my 80s.' Her sister adds: 'We both eat good food.'

(Photographer: Mariah Tauger / LA Times / Jan 12, 2011)

For nearly a century, the two look-alikes have been confusing people.

"Teachers told Mother to put different color hair ribbons on us so they could tell us apart," Inez Harries said.

"We'd switch them on the way to school," said her sister, Venice Shaw.

On Sunday, there are likely to be more double-takes when some 150 friends and family members gather in San Fernando to celebrate the identical twins' 100th birthday.

"I don't feel a century old," Harries said. "I probably don't feel any older than in my 80s."

Shaw nodded in agreement. "We both eat good food," she explained.

Born Jan. 15, 1911, in Pasadena to citrus ranch manager William Hesser and his wife, Anna, the twins were reared in San Fernando and later in what is now Granada Hills. The family also lived in Whittier for a time.

Harries is now a Sylmar resident and Shaw lives in Newbury Park.

Inseparable as young children, the twins dressed alike, double-dated as teenagers and worked at the same Sunkist packing house as young adults. Later, after both were married, the two couples vacationed together on camping trips to such places as Yosemite and Kings Canyon national parks.

Family photos show them dressed in identical baby clothes and in matching dresses, sewn by their mother, in elementary school and high school — their San Fernando High School senior portrait from 1929 shows them wearing identical pink polka-dot outfits.

In grade school, the pair had the same friends — at the same time. They would pick one girl and Inez would be on one side of her and Venice on the other, they recall.

"Other kids called us 'Twinny' rather than make a mistake calling us the wrong name, " Harries said.

Even their mother sometimes had difficulty telling the two apart.

Shaw recalls one time their mother decided to spank her for sitting in a swing she wasn't supposed to sit on. When her mother left to get a switch to use for the swat, Shaw ran off and her sister came up, sat on the swing and ended up getting the spanking.

They still share similar tastes. Both say Carol Burnett is their favorite entertainer, "Jeopardy" and "Wheel of Fortune" are their favorite TV shows and the Bible is their favorite book.

They have gone to the same doctor for 20 years, cruised together to Alaska, and traveled together on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers aboard the Mississippi Queen. Both were members of the San Fernando Friendship Club from the mid-1940s until it disbanded about five years ago.

They vividly remember the 1918 flu epidemic when their whole family was quarantined and the terrible San Fernando Valley flooding of 1938, when the two of them were nearly washed away as the car they were in was caught in rushing water on Harding Street.

Shaw worked as a supervisor for 12 years in a plastics injection plant that made small parts for sprinkler systems. Harries worked for Lockheed Aircraft for 27 years, installing control cables in P-38 fighters during World War II and later helping build Constellation airliners and helicopters.

Both women were members of the Lockheed Federal Credit Union, where Harries still has an account.

On Wednesday, officials of the Burbank credit union staged a 100th-birthday reception for the pair. Andrea Carpenter, senior vice president of marketing, described the odds of identical twins living to be 100 as about 1 in 700 million.

Before cutting a giant cake, Harries and Shaw, wearing identical black suits, spoke briefly about their long lives.

Then they performed the song that they sang on New Year's Day in 1917 when — dressed as poinsettias — they rode on their school's horse-drawn float in the Rose Parade, singing the same tune over and over.

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. All good children go to heaven. When they get there, they will say: Lamanda Park School has led the way!" the twins sang for the crowd.

In unison, of course.

By Bob Pool, Los Angeles Times

January 13, 2011
bob.pool@latimes.com
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

Crone: Women Coming of Age, "Visionaries"

2010-07-16T09:09:00.000-07:00

Crone: Women Coming of Age, "Visionaries," opens with a feature interview on Helen Redman's art (including the current Turtle Diaries series.)

Issue #3 of this collaborative literary magazine is devoted to ways in which we discover our creativity through the Crone archetype.

This brave, inspirational publication is on sale in hard copy or in an eZine version. To order and view sample pages: Crone: Women Coming of Age, "Visionaries"

Artist: Helen Redman

"Helen Redman, the subject of Ann Kreilkamp’s interview in this issue has been concentrating her artistic vision on crone images .... Her witty and razor-sharp self-portraits confound our expectations of beauty and challenge us to expand our definitions of self, crone, and art itself."

--Cronemagazine.com

'Golden Girl', Rue McClanahan Dies Of Stroke At 76

2010-06-03T11:27:00.000-07:00

Rue's statement in the The New York Times in 1985,

"Golden Girls" aimed to show "that when people mature, they add layers." "They don't turn into other creatures. The truth is we all still have our child, our adolescent, and our young woman living in us."

RIP, Rue... thanks for the laughs.

Still Dancing, Her Way, From the Soul ~By Gia Kourlas

2010-06-03T07:23:00.000-07:00

Photo: Walter E. Owen

Alicia Alonso, the longtime director of the National Ballet of Cuba, no longer dances with her feet, which, on Monday afternoon at a hotel near Lincoln Center, were daintily crossed at the ankle in a pair of ladylike slingbacks. She is also virtually blind. But when she talks about ballet, her hands, coppery and weathered, flutter near her face as slender fingers, flashing rings and pale pink nails spin and leap through delicate choreographic feats.

“I dance with the hands,” she agreed, quietly smiling. “I do. I dance with my heart actually more. So it comes through my body. I can’t help it.”

On Thursday night Ms. Alonso will celebrate her 90th birthday in a special program performed by American Ballet Theater, for which she was an instrumental dancer in its early days. (She was quick to point out, though, that she is still 89; her actual birthday is not until Dec. 21.) The evening will feature a film retrospective of Ms. Alonso’s career as well as a performance of “Don Quixote” with three principal casts.

Ms. Alonso is at once reviled and adored. Some see her as a political tool of Fidel Castro as well as someone who has remained too long in her job and who prevents certain dancers from working abroad. In 2005 Rolando Sarabia, then one of the Cuban company’s leading dancers, defected, followed later that year by Octavio Martín, a principal dancer, and his wife, Yahima Franco, also a company member. Mr. Sarabia and Mr. Martín said separately at the time that Ms. Alonso had turned down their requests to dance abroad as other Cubans did, notably Carlos Acosta.

But Ms. Alonso is also adored by balletomanes who cherish memories of her Giselle and her longevity onstage. She gave her final performance in 1995 when she danced “The Butterfly,” a piece she choreographed. She was 75.

“A young lady,” she said before surrendering to girlish giggles. “That’s fantastic, no? Two years before, I danced ‘Giselle.’”

Ms. Alonso is either a sly fox of the highest degree or an endearing old lady who wears a scarf — ears covered — with the élan of Little Edie in “Grey Gardens.” In all likelihood she’s both; her demeanor can turn on a dime. She firmly refused to answer any questions related to politics.

“I came here because they are giving me a wonderful reception, a wonderful feeling of coming back,” Ms. Alonso said. “I will talk to you about memories and things like that, and I think we should keep it like that. Don’t you think so?”

~By Gia Kourlas

Full Moon in Sagittarius

2010-05-29T08:56:00.000-07:00

Full moon in Sag is a time to begin new things, a time to renew convictions and a time to clean house. I usually begin fasts with a Sag moon... cleansing the old, and begin new activities... aiming for new goals.

"This Full Moon in Sagittarius is like the proud immigrant grandmother from the old country, who reluctantly sends the next generation out into the Gemini new world with the admonishment, "Don’t forget where you came from." We need that dignified, self-assured matriarch to remind us from time to time of what is still and unchanging at the core of who we are. To draw us away from the safety and security of the shallow end of the pool, to guide us into the deeper, still waters of understanding and belief, and to help us out when we get in over our heads."
~ April Elliott Kent

“One Day When I Was Old” by CP Estés

2010-05-17T06:41:00.000-07:00

I remember one day when I was young, forty-five years or so old,
I woke up an old woman that morning.
Not quite in body all the way, but close.
And also in mind.
And I thought, “This is good.”
For also, in the face I was changed,
a little bark-chipped and creased,
like a tree long-lived enough
after having been planted so long ago
by some winged bird
accidentally letting fall a semi-sacred seed
into some almost impossible place,
precisely the way most of us came to earth–
unplanned, and yet sticking to the place
where we were dropped,
growing, growing flowers and fruits
set into our DNA–
and this too was good.

I leaned through the window
of my bathroom mirror,
and touched her old, cracked face…
I soothed back her black hair
with fire opals
in its strands of white.

And I saw as I leaned in,
There were permanent diamonds
in her tear ducts,
those gotten from years of use
and pressure in dark places.

And I gazed at the body
she and I share,
and I saw that rubies
had grown into all my cuts
and that tiny mirrors shone
in all my widders and spalls…

and I saw that I was old
and strong
and delicate
and fierce, like a queen
who has ruled the lands within her reach,
not perfectly, but despite brutal winters,
she was still alive,
the heartwood hardened off just enough,
the tender capillaries still able to carry
the juice and the warmth.

And then, twenty-some years later,
I crossed the crone line,
wearing the tissue-paper crown
with the sacred words “Still here,
still standing…”
engraved upon it.
These words of triumph for all of us elders,
these words “Still here… Still standing,”
they’re the ultimate royal “Ha!”,
the ultimate para la vida “Ha!”,
to life, with life, all of life, filled with life.
Us, crossed now, the crone line,
para la vida, filled with life.

I remember one day when I was young,
forty-five years old or so,
I woke up an old woman that morning.
Not in body quite all the way, but close.
Also in mind, and this was good.
And also in the face I was changed
with all the marks of rings like a tree,
and this too was good.

I looked at my body
and saw that rubies had grown
in all my cuts,
and mirrors shone in all the widders and spalls.
And I saw I was old and strong,
like a queen who had ruled herself
not perfectly, but well.

And I leaned in and touched her old, cracked face,
and I saw the permanent diamonds in her tear ducts
that were gotten from years of hard use
and pressure in dark places.

I remember one day when I was young,
forty-five years old or so,
I woke up an old woman.
And I have been more and more free
ever since.

______________________

CODA
And so may it be for you.
And so may it be for me.
And so may it be for all of us.
Amen.

And as my grandmother used to say,
“Amen… and a little woman.”
_______________________

“One Day When I Was Old,” a blessing-poem by CP Estés, Copyright ©1990, 2010, All Rights Reserved, including but not limited to electronic, performance, theatrical, musical, graphic, film, commercial, derivitive. Uses: You are welcome to use this blessing poem in non-commercial ways without adding to nor deleting any part, just using the work in its entirety along with author’s name and this copyright notice attached. Thank you. Other permissions: Ngandelman@aol.com
Multiple Media artwork, “One Day When I Was Old, The Old Woman Came Calling” by CP Estés, ©2009. All Rights Reserved. Same permissions as blessing-poem.

"I Like Being Old" - by K. Eileen Allen

2010-05-08T12:52:00.000-07:00

Click here to read an excerpt of "I Like Being Old" and listen to a podcast of K. Eileen Allen.

Photo credit

Eileen Allen doesn't fit the stereotype of a 90-year-old woman. She's still trying new things, looking forward and making choices that give her the best life possible. She's happy, even with vision, hearing and mobility loss. I Like Being Old provides inspiration for the 78 million baby boomers on the threshold of old age as well as those already far into it.

The reader looks over Eileen's shoulder as she tells how she's faced important decisions, such as:

When to give up driving;

When to move to a retirement center;

How to stay fit and involved;

How to adjust to decreasing independence.

And as she describes adaptations she's made to enrich her life:

Teaching herself to be more humorous;

Memorizing poetry when loss of vision meant she could no longer read;

Walking three miles around the lake across from her retirement center...with her walker.

With Eileen as your guide, open yourself to the choices you continue to have,
to finding satisfaction in solving the problems that increase with years,
to discovering that you can keep learning, and
to enjoying a slowed-down pace that lets you focus on new interests and new dimensions of yourself.

Source

Inspired Comment

2010-04-17T11:16:00.000-07:00

Reality Sandwich is a place I expect to find mindbending articles. Not disappointed after having read John Jay Harper's "Trance: The Science of Self-Healing Our Bipolar Soul Bodies", I skimmed the reader's comments and found this most inspiring commentary... another poetic example of what makes the internet so darn cool!

The Spirit of Zero ... Zero Point Field State of "All That Is"

Too much of everything to be anything ... hence the need for time and space manifestation out of this trans-dimensional state .. so that something can exist in relation to another thing.

"Quantum Compression" ... like all colors are there in white light ... all sound present within silence ... all movement contained within stillness ... all relativity contained within revelation ...

The further from zero one goes the more numbers are needed .. yet after every "cycle of possibility" more zeros are required to instigate a new cycle ... 0-1 / 9-10 /99-100/ 999-1000 Negative numbers also ... before the smallest thing ... after the greatest thing

At the peak of the Winter season .. again it begins to warm up ... at the peak of the summer .. again it begins to cool .. endless "manifest" cycles in relation to this "potential field state"

From the theistic perspective, according to the ancient Vedic literatures of "pre-Hindhu" India, there is the conception of the "Brahmajoti" and/or "Brahman" ... similar to the "the great white light" / "the Zero Point Field state of all pre-manifest possibility"

http://www.gosai.com/chaitanya/saranagati/html/vishnu_mjs/jiva/origin_ss...

The very "glow of God" ... according to these ancient texts. Like the sunshine in relation to the actual sun globe.

Like when coming out of a movie theater, the light seems so bright, relative to previous darkness, one cannot actually see the sun .. only immense rays of "shine" ... up and until one can adjust to the possibility of a source to this light.

Similarly atheists agnostics and existentialists could be seen as those not yet adjusted to more than just the "glow" .. hence the concepts of "void" ... "nothingness" etc.

Like many stars make up the appearance of a Milky Way ... infinite number of "pre-atomic" souls make up this Glow of God.

They exist there in a state of "semi-neutral" mellow, called "Santa Rasa" {Sanskrit} Sometimes briefly experienced {oneness} in meditative states of consciousness.

Like in deep sleep, as we come out of this state we very gradually begin to experience form and sound ... time/space/ dimension.

However "God" is not understood as a "homogeneous conglomerate" from this ancient perspective ... but, like the sun globe and sunshine example

... "Krsna" {Sanskrit - God - source of all-attraction and pleasure} is his own personality, complete unto himself ... like shadow and form ... as we manifest and react .. it gives Krsna something to exist in relationship to.

Our individuality and Krsna's { Allah/Jehovah/Yahweh etc} individuality never "merges" .. but does experience great cycles {cosmic} of manifest and non-manifest "Lila" .. or ongoing activities of relationship ... and the state of resting in the potential for relationship.

If a group of kindergarten children all took "nap time" together, and then gradually awoke in the same few moments .. it might seem as if they "merged" or "became one" .. yet at no point was individually lost or conceded to homogeneous dissolution.

Yoga is the very word for the ongoing linking between potential {Tao} and manifest {Zen} states. ...

According to Vedic philosophy, each of us is a "Jiva" {individual soul} with "Caitanya" {immortal character} ... either merged in the mellows, humors or rasas of activity ... or those of "conscious rest"

The whole material manifestation {pre-post Zero Point Field State} only incorporates about 1/4 of all the potential jivas [us souls} ... while approximately 3/4 remain in the potential state ... this proportion forever maintained as souls constantly come and go.

.. from a Vedic perspective with a quantum twist

... time/space/matter/energy only apparent to degree one is yoking {yoga} with either the potential or manifest states .. individually or collectively ... micro or macro cosmically.

It being no more a "new age" ... than an "ancient way" ... the quantum nature of all ongoings from an absolute perspective

Social Networks a Lifeline for the Chronically Ill

2010-04-16T14:43:00.000-07:00

A former model who is now chronically ill and struggles just to shower says the people she has met online have become her family. A quadriplegic man uses the Web to share tips on which places have the best wheelchair access, and a woman with multiple sclerosis says her regular Friday night online chats are her lifeline.

For many people, social networks are a place for idle chatter about what they made for dinner or sharing cute pictures of their pets. But for people living with chronic diseases or disabilities, they play a more vital role.

“It’s really literally saved my life, just to be able to connect with other people,” said Sean Fogerty, 50, who has multiple sclerosis, is recovering from brain cancer and spends an hour and a half each night talking with other patients online.

People fighting chronic illnesses are less likely than others to have Internet access, but once online they are more likely to blog or participate in online discussions about health problems, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project and the California HealthCare Foundation.

“If they can break free from the anchors holding them down, people living with chronic disease who go online are finding resources that are more useful than the rest of the population,” said Susannah Fox, associate director of digital strategy at Pew and author of the report.

They are gathering on big patient networking sites like PatientsLikeMe, HealthCentral, Inspire, CureTogether and Alliance Health Networks, and on small sites started by patients on networks like Ning and Wetpaint.

Sherri Connell, 46, modeled and performed in musicals until, at age 27, she learned she had multiple sclerosis and Lyme disease. She began posting her journal entries online for friends and family to read. Soon, people from all over the world were reading her Web site and telling her they had similar health problems.

In 2008, she and her husband started a social network using Ning called My Invisible Disabilities Community. It now has 2,300 members who write about living with lupus, forthcoming operations or medical bills, for example.

“People have good and bad days, and they don’t know a good day’s going to come Wednesday at 5 o’clock when a live support group is meeting,” Ms. Connell said. “The Internet is a great outlet for people to be honest.”

Not surprisingly, according to Pew, Internet users with chronic illnesses are more likely than healthy people to use the Web to look for information on specific diseases, drugs, health insurance, alternative or experimental treatments and depression, anxiety or stress.

But for them, the social aspects of the Web take on heightened importance. Particularly if they are homebound, they also look to the Web for their social lives, discussing topics unrelated to their illnesses. Some schedule times to eat dinner or watch a movie while chatting online.

John Linna, a pastor in Neenah, Wis., did not know what a blog was when his son suggested he start one after discovering he needed to stay home on a ventilator.

“That day my little world began to expand,” he wrote in a post last year about blogging. “Soon I had a little neighborhood. It was like stopping in for coffee every day just to see how things were going.”

When Mr. Linna died earlier this year, people all over the Web who had never met him in person mourned the loss.

Others use the Web to find practical tips about living with their disease or disability that doctors and family members, having not lived with it themselves, cannot provide.

On Diabetic Connect, a diabetes social network with 140,000 members, people share recipes like low-sugar banana pudding, review products like an insulin pump belt and have discussions like a recent one started by a patient with a new diagnosis. “I don’t like to talk to my family and friends about this,” she wrote. “Honestly I feel helpless. I really just need some advice and people to talk to who might have been experiencing the same things.”

Amy Tenderich is the community manager for Diabetic Connect and writes a blog called Diabetes Mine. “There’s no doctor in the world, unless they’ve actually lived with this thing, that can get into that nitty-gritty,” she said. “I’ve walked away from dinner parties with tears in my eyes because people just don’t understand.”

Patients often use social networks to interact with people without worrying about the stigma of physical disabilities, said Susan Smedema, an assistant professor of rehabilitation counseling at Florida State University who studies the psychosocial aspects of disability.

From her home in Maine, Susan Fultz plays online games at Pogo.com and commiserates with people who are frustrated that they do not have a diagnosis for their symptoms.

“There’s no worry of being judged or criticized, and that is something that I know a lot of us don’t get in our daily lives,” said Ms. Fultz, who has Lyme disease and psoriatic arthritis.

Those with chronic diseases or disabilities, like all Internet users, have to be wary about sharing private health information online, particularly with anonymous users.

Research has also shown that emotions can be contagious, said Paul Albert, digital services librarian at Weill Cornell Medical Library in New York who has researched how social networks meet the needs of patients with chronic diseases.

“If you hang out on a message board where people are very negative, you can easily adopt a negative attitude about your disease,” he said. “On the other hand, if people are hopeful, you might be better off.”

Some people also worry that patients might exchange erroneous medical information on the Web, he said. Yet most patient social networks make clear that the information on the site should not substitute for medical advice, and the Pew study found that just 2 percent of adults living with chronic diseases report being harmed by following medical advice found on the Internet.

Instead, the sites are used to share information from the front lines, said Lily Vadakin, 45, who has multiple sclerosis and works as a site administrator for Disaboom, a social network for people with disabilities. For instance, she has discussed with other patients how to combat fatigue by working at home and taking vitamin supplements.

“That’s what the community can give you — a real-life perspective,” she said.

Social Networks a Lifeline for the Chronically Ill

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

Ego must move aside to reach 'pure being'

2010-04-16T09:57:00.000-07:00

Photo credit

Imagine that all you know yourself to be and all that others perceive in you - your personality, attitudes and mannerisms - just disappears. It slips off like a robe, leaving you psychologically naked before the universe.

This figurative nakedness is what theologians call a state of "pure being" or "the ground of your being." Theoretically, it's what's left when your mental onion has been peeled down to its core.

To most, the idea of losing one's sense of self is a fearful prospect. But among mystics, this is a desirable state, one in which they seek to shed their egos to enter a realm of unified consciousness, of oneness with all.

Many of them believe that when we die, the persona called "me" (which encompasses your personality) just vanishes. If that's true, then what, if anything, is left?

Well, mystics claim that once the ego is gone, there is no mental observer in one's psyche. You are no longer a splintered self, with one part (the one who thinks) observing and commenting on the other (the one who feels and acts).

What remains, they assert, is a profound sense of oneness in which you are no longer a separate individual, meaning your consciousness merges with an all-encompassing unity. We get a little taste of this when we totally lose ourselves in some engaging activity, like reading a book, listening to music, watching a film or any other "in the flow" experience.

Now, many mystics believe that to truly know God, whatever you hold that to be, your ego must get out of the way. This is a different route to the divine than some religions propose, particularly those that believe we retain our sense of self (personality) beyond death.

So, assuming for a moment that death is the end of "me," who or what is left to experience this timeless state of spiritual oneness that mystics say remains? Good question.

"At the core, we are pure consciousness, which death cannot destroy," one of them told me.

His assertion can't be proved, of course, but science does know that we humans are energy in a material form. Physicists also tell us that energy cannot be destroyed, but only transformed.

There's little disagreement that death is transformational. The debate arises over what that transformation yields. Do you remain a "me" on the other side of death's door, or does your personal identity dissolve into a greater whole, like a raindrop falling into the sea?

Obviously, nobody knows, but if the ego is a transient mental persona that dissolves at death, as many mystics contend, then each of us would do well to whittle ours down to size while still in this world. Through spiritual practices such as meditation, prayer, kindness, service to others and self-sacrifice, we can learn to identify less with the ego and more with that state of pure being that the mystics seek.

"Do I end at death?" many of us wonder.

The answer may depend on whether your "I" mostly represents your ego or, instead, largely reflects your soul.

Philip Chard is a psychotherapist, author and trainer. Names used in this column are changed to honor client confidentiality. E-mail him at pschard@earthlink.net or visit www.philipchard.com.

Friends of Trees

2010-04-14T13:47:00.000-07:00

I've got the shirt...
the Friends of Trees shirt.

Its a nice shirt to have... even if you're not a tree hugger.

The Friends of Trees have planted 391,764 trees and shrubs over the past 20 years.
They come to your neighborhood and have tree planting parties. And they show you how to care for and maintain them. They even have volunteers who look after ones no longer being tended to...

they love trees.

Born A Copy - Die An Original

2010-04-14T11:22:00.000-07:00

The older we get, the more different we become. This is the conclusion of a study that followed people from their 70th to their 90th year of life.

Old people are usually thought of as a rather homogenous group - they are considered to be ill, lonely and unable to take care of themselves. But the truth is that the differences among people grow with age,' says Bo G Eriksson, University of Gothenburg.

As part of his doctoral thesis, Eriksson studied participants of the extensive and unique so-called H-70 study, which is based on a group of randomly selected individuals born in 1901 and 1902 who were followed closely over their entire lifetimes. Eriksson's study focuses on the period from their 70th to their 90th year of life. It turns out that people become more and more different as they age.

'The perception of old people having similar interests, values and lifestyles can lead to age discrimination. However, I found that, as people age, these stereotypes become more and more untrue,' says Eriksson.

Eriksson also studied differences in causes of death with increasing age, and again found indications of possible age discrimination.

Eriksson explored how social conditions can affect longevity, and found four mechanisms at work. The first two relate to creation of social facts. Examples of social facts include promises and agreements that strengthen the identities of individuals. The third mechanism relates to how a person builds and maintains self esteem by successfully responding to challenges. The fourth mechanism consists of everyday conversations, which decrease anxiety and offer support in everyday decision making, improves attention and gives the brain and the memory a healthy workout.

'Taken together, these mechanisms also contribute to increased everyday activity, which has some beneficial physical effects,' says Eriksson.

Moreover, Eriksson applied two different methods to predict people's lifespan: one that researchers commonly use when calculating probability and one that is based on artificial neural networks (ANN), which is common in research on artificial intelligence. It turned out that the ANN method was more effective in complex situations where traditional methods do not work. ANN may therefore be appropriate in evaluations of results produced with traditional research methods.

About the H70 study: The H70 study, started in 1971, is a unique population-based study on ageing among 70-year-olds. It includes both medical and cognitive dimensions. Five different groups of 70-year-olds have so far been assessed, and a number of trends in mental and physical health have been identified. In addition, some groups have been followed longitudinally over three decades. The H70 study is coordinated by several research groups at the University of Gothenburg.

Born A Copy - Die An Original
06 Apr 2010

Source:
Bo G. Eriksson
University of Gothenburg
Article URL: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/184533.php

On the lighter side...

2010-04-12T08:20:00.000-07:00

Humor is a great way to to communicate serious issues, while keeping it light.

Sacred Construct

2010-04-09T10:01:00.000-07:00

Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer observed that all truth passes through three stages.

First, it is ridiculed.

Second, it is violently opposed.

Third, it is accepted as self-evident.

Such a truth has emerged in our lifetime.
It informs us that we exist as a tiny fragment of an immensely larger interlocking whole in which all of the parts are interconnected and dependent upon each other for survival.
Allow me to repeat that.
A truth has emerged that informs us that we exist as a tiny fragment of an immensely larger interlocking whole in which all of the parts are interconnected and dependent upon each other for survival.
Simply put, everything is connected to everything else.
We exist, not separately, but in communion with all living things.
Life is an interrelated, interdependent phenomenon.
Everything is in relationship.
That is the nature of the universe.
That is the nature of life.

Click here to read the rest of the article: Seven Words that can Change the World

Sandra M. Stanton paints goddesses

2010-03-24T11:03:00.000-07:00

Stumbled across this link... this artist, Sandra Stanton... is too good not to share. She paints goddesses from all traditions... beautifully.

Artist: Sandra M. Stanton

This is Ix-Chel, Mayan Goddess of the Moon and Lady of the Rainbow ...one of her goddess paintings that spoke to me ...but there were many more.

Why do the reckless survive?

2010-03-12T07:02:00.000-08:00

"I begin with the first issue that comes at me out of that Tillamook blimp hanger. It is, "Why do the reckless survive?" Reckless people expose themselves to more danger. Surely that threatens their Darwinian survival. You'd expect each generation to be more careful than the last. But recklessness does survive -- generation after generation.

The hunter who won't face a buffalo starves. The parent who won't risk her life to save her child faces Darwinian extinction. Writer Melvin Konner asks us to look more closely at risk-takers. He explains that psychologists identify four faces of that person:

First: thrill and adventure-seeking
race cars and mountain-climbing.

Second: experience seeking
like travel or new friends.

Third: disinhibition
hedonism in its various forms.

Fourth: boredom susceptibility
being unable to bear routine.

That list caught me up short. For years I've praised the inventive mind. Now I had a psychological profile for recklessness, and it fit the inventive mind perfectly.

Thrill and adventure-seeking is at the heart of creativity. The "Eureka" moment is a mountain-top experience; you know that! We chance terrible frustration and defeat to get there.

Experience-seeking means opening ourselves to the dangers of change. That's the way we forge creative connections.

Creativity is certainly hedonistic. The moment of discovery is pure pleasure. Like other physical pleasures, it is a moment of letting-go -- of abandoning control.

And invention is the only real way to beat back boredom. It takes off the comfortable, protective old shoe of familiarity.

The reckless survive because invention is the primal act of human recklessness. It's also our major survival trait. Unlike bears, we can't survive the cold without heaters and houses. Unlike lions, we can't kill prey without weapons. Unlike oxen, we can't graze grass we didn't plant and harvest. Recklessness is more than entering a burning house to save our child. For our frail species it is that, but it's more. It's the courage of the creative spirit. It's the hedonistic pleasure of abandoning control. It's risking change."

~by John H. Lienhard
Excerpt from "INVENTION, A DANGEROUS GUEST
Do You Really Want Creative People in Your Organization?"

The Golden Buddha

2010-03-11T07:57:00.000-08:00

While on a trip to Thailand, my wife and I visited many famous Buddhist temples. One left an indelible impression in our hearts and minds.

It is called the Temple of the Golden Buddha. Inside is a huge ten-and-a-half foot Solid Gold Buddha - weighing over two-and-a half tons and valued at approximately $196 million.... Quite an awesome sight - the kindly gentle, yet imposing solid gold Buddha smiling down on us.

... Next to the Buddha was a large piece of clay and a page describing its history - back in 1957 a group of monks had to relocate a clay Buddha from their temple to a new location. During the journey the crane transporting the statue nearly broke under the strain and it started to rain.

The Buddha was covered with a tarp for the night. During this time one of the monks noticed a light shining out from a crack in the the clay.

He chipped away at the clay and as he chipped the gleam became bigger and bigger. Many hours of labour later, the monk stood face to face with an extraordinary solid gold Buddha.

Historians believe several hundred years before the monks had covered the Buddha with clay to keep their precious.

Buddha from being looted when the Burmese army invaded Thailand (then Siam). The Buddha remained intact until that fateful day in 1957.

As I flew home I began to think to myself, "We are all like the clay Buddha covered with a shell of hardness created out of fear, and yet underneath each of us is a 'golden Buddha', a 'golden Christ' or a 'golden essence', which is our real self.

Somewhere along the way, between the ages of two and nine, we begin to cover up our 'golden essence', our natural self.

Much like the monk with the hammer and the chisel, our task now is to discover our true essence once again."

Carole King talking about her grandmother

2010-03-07T00:10:00.000-08:00

Perfect love sometimes does not come until the first grandchild. ~Welsh Proverb

Never Too Old to Rock

2010-03-06T23:45:00.000-08:00

Never Too Old to Rock...

"Time revises every taste and closes every gap. To observe the Young@Heart Chorus, a fluctuating group of about two dozen singers whose average age is 80, perform "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees in Stephen Walker's documentary "Young@Heart" is to be uplifted, if slightly unsettled.

Sung by people approaching the end of their lives, the song is no longer about strutting through the urban jungle with your elbows out; it is a blunt survival anthem. These singers, most of them well- rehearsed amateurs, refuse to go gently into that good night. For them music is oxygen.

When they perform punk classics like "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by the Clash or "I Wanna Be Sedated" by the Ramones, the notion of a generation gap begins to crumble. Apart from the rebellious attitude behind the songs' creation, these are elementary meat-and-potatoes tunes: "Sing Along With Mitch" material but with a hip credential.

The movie concentrates on the rigorous two-month preparations for a 2006 concert at the Academy Theater in Northampton. Guided by the chorus's demanding longtime director, Bob Cilman, the members are learning new material, including "Yes We Can Can," the Allen Toussaint hit for the Pointer Sisters, whose lyrics repeat "can" 71 times in intricate, staccato patterns; Sonic Youth's enigmatic, equally demanding "Schizophrenia"; and the Coldplay ballad "Fix You."

The fact that the chorus's members are willing to tackle such daunting material attests to the spirit of adventure that is a crucial spur to their shared bonhomie. More than one member admits that his or her favorite music is classical, opera or show tunes. These rock songs are unfamiliar. Instead of comfortable walks around the block, rehearsals (there are three a week) are demanding hikes over hilly terrain. The challenge only makes it more exciting." ~ By STEPHEN HOLDEN, New York Times

Who are the Crones Counsel?

2010-02-20T20:11:00.000-08:00

CRONES COUNSEL, INC., is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to honoring and celebrating the lives of older women. We use the word Crone to refer to and reclaim the original meaning of the term:
A Crone is an elder woman who embodies wisdom, one who embraces both the light and the dark sides of her life.
At our national gatherings, we conduct workshops, exchange information, and enjoy singing, dancing, and drumming.
As we listen to each other’s stories, we share laughter and tears, always honoring one another, especially the eldest in our midst.
As a result, we are able to go out into the world with more power, knowledge, and energy for the paths that lie ahead.

"Portrait of an old woman" - Guido Reni

Your sacred place - Joseph Campbell

2010-02-20T20:02:00.000-08:00

"People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on a purely physical plane will have resonances within our innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That's what it is all finally about." ~Joseph Campbell

Crones Counsel Today

2010-02-20T19:33:00.000-08:00

The word Crone, in its most simplistic sense, designates an old woman, a woman past her childbearing years, a post-menopausal woman. Today, the most common definition of a Crone is a “wise old woman.” Thus, a Crone is a woman who has moved past mid-life and who acknowledges her survivorship, embraces her age, learns from the examined experience of her life, and, most likely, appreciates the wrinkles on her face.
A Crone is a woman concerned with housing, social security, pensions, healthcare, her relationships with children, grandchildren, and siblings. A Crone is a retired woman, a soon-to-be retired woman, a widow, an empty nester who desires good health, energetic living, and independence. A Crone is a woman who is adapting constructively, often gracefully, to the process of aging. A Crone is a woman who is comfortable with her spiritual self, her intuition, and her creative power.

A Crone may be a woman of any color, race, religion, sexual orientation, economic status, educational level, lifestyle, or political persuasion. She may be disabled or abled, introvert or extrovert, single, married, widowed, or partnered. She is like you and me. What does set the Crone apart, however, is her willingness to tell the truth about her life.

Crone women fly directly into the face of ageism and sexism. They refuse to be put down. They do not walk meekly on the road to old age. They are keen to assert their presence if not their influence.

Crone provides an energetic consciousness, a radical aliveness, which fuels the fierceness of women’s strength in old age. Crone is a framework for honoring the wisdom of elder women. Crone is a template for communication, community, and communion. Crone is a basis for cooperation and compassion for all living beings. Such a consciousness allows for action in the world or for deep, quiet peacefulness with all that is.

Thus, a Crone is an older woman who has learned to walk in her own truth, in her own way, having gained her strength by acknowledging the power and wisdom of the totality of her experience. She is “a wise old woman.” As a woman moves past youth and midlife into old age she consciously takes on the mantel of Crone - a woman who celebrates her survivorship, willingly choosing to continue forward in life with all the gusto she can muster. A Crone is a woman burnished bright by an inner fire that sharpens both her wit and her intensity, her passion and her power.

By Susan Ann Stauffer

"Blessed Unrest" by Paul Hawken

2010-01-30T11:32:00.000-08:00

Blessed Unrest:

How the Largest Movement In the World Came Into Being

and

No One Saw it Coming

"This is first full account of the real news of our time, and it's exactly the opposite of the official account. The movers and shakers on our planet aren't the billionaires and the generals--they are the incredible numbers of people around the world filled with love for neighbor and for the earth who are resisting, remaking, restoring, renewing, revitalizing. This powerful and lovely book is their story - our story - and it's high time someone's told it. Nothing you read for years to come will fill you with more hope and more determination." ~Bill McKibben

Paul said his inspiration for the title was this quote:

"There is a vitality, a life-force, a quickening that is translated through you into action; and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.

And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is; nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares to other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you.

Keep the channel open... No artist is pleased...

There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching - and makes us more alive than the others.

~ Martha Graham

Bunky Echo Hawk and his NVision

2010-01-30T10:39:00.000-08:00

"Bunky is the founder of,

NVision,

committed to raising political, social, and cultural

CONSCIOUSNESS

of current and emerging generations of young Native peoples and promoting

INFORMED and INNOVATIVE ACTION."

Inheriting the Legacy, by Bunky Echo-Hawk

"NVision is a collective of dynamic Native men and women professionals, ages 25-40, involved in arts, multi-media, film, youth leadership development, Indian education, politics/community organizing, fundraising, community development, and music, who have banded together to develop innovative and cutting edge projects and programming that will:

1. Empower and promote the well-being of Native youth and young adults.

2. Promote a new generation of dynamic Native leadership in the arts, media, cultural revitalization, entertainment, education, and community development who are committed to protecting and exerting Native sovereignty and the traditional and contemporary cultural lifeways of Native Nations and peoples.

3. Raise consciousness about political, cultural, and social issues impacting Indian Country, and help give a voice to current and new generations of young Native peoples.

4. Support the development and dissemination of innovative and ground-breaking projects by up and coming Native youth and young adults in the areas of visual and performing arts, culture, education, community development, media, film, and research.

5. Build networks of communication, shared resources, and mutual support between emerging and established Native leadership from a variety of backgrounds, and with Native Nations and organizations that share a positive vision for Native youth and Indian Country." ~ NVision

Social Scientists Build Case for 'Survival of the Kindest'

2010-01-29T10:11:00.000-08:00

"Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are challenging long-held beliefs that human beings are wired to be selfish. In a wide range of studies, social scientists are amassing a growing body of evidence to show we are evolving to become more compassionate and collaborative in our quest to survive and thrive.

In contrast to "every man for himself" interpretations of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, Dacher Keltner, a UC Berkeley psychologist and author of "Born to be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life," and his fellow social scientists are building the case that humans are successful as a species precisely because of our nurturing, altruistic and compassionate traits.

They call it "survival of the kindest."

"Because of our very vulnerable offspring, the fundamental task for human survival and gene replication is to take care of others," said Keltner, co-director of UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center. "Human beings have survived as a species because we have evolved the capacities to care for those in need and to cooperate. As Darwin long ago surmised, sympathy is our strongest instinct.""Sympathy is indeed wired into our brains and bodies; and it spreads from one person to another through touch," Keltner said.

The same goes for smaller mammals. UC Berkeley psychologist Darlene Francis and Michael Meaney, a professor of biological psychiatry and neurology at McGill University, found that rat pups whose mothers licked, groomed and generally nurtured them showed reduced levels of stress hormones, including cortisol, and had generally more robust immune systems.

Overall, these and other findings at UC Berkeley challenge the assumption that nice guys finish last, and instead support the hypothesis that humans, if adequately nurtured and supported, tend to err on the side of compassion.

"This new science of altruism and the physiological underpinnings of compassion is finally catching up with Darwin's observations nearly 130 years ago, that sympathy is our strongest instinct," Keltner said."

Story Source:
Adapted from materials provided by University of California, Berkeley. Original article written by Yasmin Anwar, Media Relations.

Supporting Scientific Research for the Peace Every Day Initiative

2010-01-28T16:31:00.000-08:00

The inspiration for the Peace Every Day Initiative has been validated and deeply inspired by many scientific research projects that clearly demonstrate the power and effectiveness of group meditation/prayer in the process of creating peace. The following are just some of the illuminating examples. If you know of more and would like them to be published on this site or would like to conduct a research project in conjunction with PEDI, please contact us. It is our mission to continue to inspire this process!

The idea that a critical mass of meditators being peace in a specific population area can create positive social change has been supported by over 300 studies. For example, in 1973, Dilbeck and Associates found in 22 similar cities, of populations of approximately 25,000, that in half of these cities, where one percent of the population was using the Transcendental Meditation (TM) practice, there was 16 percent less crime.
In a similar type of study by TM, 350 meditators were brought in for a period of three months in the State of Rhode Island. Researchers observed that there was over a 43 percent drop in social disorder, including suicides, homicides, divorce, traffic fatalities, rapes, robbery, aggravated assaults and larceny, and even a drop in beer and cigarette sales. After the meditators left, the statistics for social disorder went back to “normal.” In order to prove that this drop of 43 percent was not a fluke, the TM meditators repeated the same experiment the next summer, and found a similar drop in the statistics of social disorder.
Group prayer and meditation not only affects the consciousness of people towards peace, but research by Dr. Buryl Payne on the solar effects of the Peace the 21st world peace meditations, shows that we even affect the whole solar system. In studying sunspot activity around the time of the Peace the 21st meditations, he found an average of 36% decrease in sunspot activity for the following four days after each meditation. His previous statistical research points out that a decrease in sunspot activity is associated with more social harmony on earth.
Physicists have discovered, also, that the principle of critical mass is seen in nature. They have found that in the use of physics laser technology, when eight of sixty-four random photons become synchronized, the other fifty-six random photons spontaneously become synchronized in a laser form. Again supporting the principle that when the square root is coherent it brings coherence to the larger whole.
Two sets of research done at the Heartmath Institute have further clarified the power of feeling-based prayer. Their researchers found two sets of information: (1) When DNA is placed in a vacuum, it creates a subtle energy field template that organizes the photon patterns, and even when the DNA is taken away, the photon pattern remains. (2) Researchers found that our emotional state creates an electromagnetic field that extends at least 50 feet, affecting leaves, trees, and all of nature. This research clearly documents the relationship between feelings and the physical world. In other words, human thought and emotion create a feeling that literally organizes the arrangement and frequency of our cellular DNA. Our DNA gives off a frequency that arranges and affects the molecular structures, both inside our body, creating health or illness, and also affects the structures outside our body. Therefore, as we change our emotions and thoughts, we create a feeling that changes the DNA. This change in DNA changes the consciousness pattern outside of ourselves in all of nature, including us human beings and our consciousness, as we are a part of nature. By the state of our consciousness we have the opportunity to create a social matrix of peace that can heal the planet.
As pointed out in PEDI Founder, Gabriel Cousens’, M.D., 2005 book, Spiritual Nutrition: Six Foundations for Spiritual Life and the Awakening of Kundalini, we are living human crystals, and the heart and brain are huge liquid crystals that give off powerful electromagnetic fields. Researchers have since found there is a five to eight foot electromagnetic field extending from the human body around the heart that they have measured. It may actually extend for miles with more sensitive measuring. The heart gives off a field that regulates the brain, the brain affects the immune system, and the brain then sends the message not only to the immune system, but also to the rest of the body. This basically regulates human feeling, which then affects the DNA and the DNA vibrates into nature, affecting all of nature. As illustrated by Buryl Payne’s research, this field goes beyond the 50 feet to literally affecting the solar system.

Author of “A People’s History of the United States,” Howard Zinn, dead at 87

2010-01-28T15:32:00.000-08:00

Associated Press

"Born Aug. 24, 1922, Howard Zinn grew up in New York City. His parents were Jewish immigrants, and his father ran candy stores during the Depression without much success. “We moved a lot, one step ahead of the landlord,” Mr. Zinn recalled. “I lived in all of Brooklyn’s best slums.”

He graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School and became a pipe fitter in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where he met his future wife, Roslyn Shechter. He joined the Army Air Corps in 1943, and became a bombardier in a B-17. He watched his bombs rain down and, when he returned to New York, deposited his medals in an envelope and wrote: “Never Again.” He and his wife lived in a rat-infested basement apartment as he dug ditches and worked in a brewery. Later they moved to public housing and he went to college on the G.I. Bill.

Mr. Zinn, retired from the history faculty at Boston University two decades ago, wrote, “A People’s History of the United States.” It has sold nearly two million copies. To describe it as a revisionist account is to risk understatement. A conventional historical account held no allure; he concentrated on what he saw as the genocidal depredations of Christopher Columbus, the blood lust of Theodore Roosevelt and the racial failings of Abraham Lincoln. He also shined an insistent light on the revolutionary struggles of impoverished farmers, feminists, laborers and resisters of slavery and war.

Such stories are more often recounted in textbooks today; they were not at the time.

“Our nation had gone through an awful lot — the Vietnam War, civil rights, Watergate — yet the textbooks offered the same fundamental nationalist glorification of country,” Mr. Zinn recalled in a recent interview with The New York Times. “I got the sense that people were hungry for a different, more honest take.” ~Michael Powell

You were right, Mr Zinn. Thank-you. RIP

The United Nation’s 1st report on The State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples,

2010-01-28T14:28:00.000-08:00

"...released on January 14, 2010, contains figures and an assessment that are both shocking and illuminating, even to those who are familiar with indigenous rights issues.

The report states that, “Indigenous peoples suffer from the consequences of historic injustice, including colonization, dispossession of their lands, territories and resources, oppression and discrimination, as well as lack of control over their own ways of life. Their right to development has been largely denied by colonial and modern States in the pursuit of economic growth”

A recent study that applied the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Index (HDI) – which measures health, education and standard of living — to indigenous populations in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand found that while the U.S. ranked seventh overall (globally), U.S. American Indians and Alaska Natives ranked thirtieth." ~Angela Chang

Artist: Unknown

Banksy rocks Sundance 2010 festival with 'Gift Shop'

2010-01-25T10:54:00.000-08:00

Read what the L.A. Times said about Banksy, "An internationally renowned art world icon whose political, occasionally angry and mordantly funny pieces sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars to such big ticket collectors as Brad Pitt and Christina Aguilera, Banksy clings to his anonymity -- despite strenuous efforts of fans and detractors, no one has been able to unmask him. But he has legions of followers: A British show last year, titled "Banksy Versus the Bristol Museum," attracted more than 300,000 visitors."

"Change" by Banksy

'Gift Shop'... "The movie doesn’t appear anywhere in the Sundance Film Festival’s catalogue. Outside a small circle of ultra-secretive confidantes, nobody knows its director’s identity and whereabouts. And the film’s place in the Sundance schedule wasn’t even announced until last week.

That hasn’t stopped acclaimed British street artist Banksy's “Exit Through the Gift Shop” from becoming Park City’s hottest ticket." --John Horn and Chris Lee

PACE AND PLACE - Workshop on Creativity & Aging

2010-01-24T20:55:00.000-08:00

Helen Redman

an internationally exhibited artist, feminist, teacher and grandmother

who focuses on the heightened creativity and spiritual growth that comes with age,

will be conducting the following workshop:

PACE AND PLACE

Workshop on Creativity & Aging

"Heeding the call of the turtle, slowly poking out from its shell, expanding forward and contracting back when necessary:

I wonder-- how do we recycle and retrofit ourselves for these changing times?

As befits our economic times, we create with anything and everything, recycled materials and mixed media!

The art encounters take place in my Point Loma studio...

We are blooming creatively, sharing perspectives, having fun

and growing older together "art-rageously!""

~ Helen Redman

Interested in attending? E-mail: redcrone@aol.com

Enter the Clutter Challenge Contest

2010-01-10T09:48:00.000-08:00

Join AARP's Clutter Challenge community and upload before and after photos of your decluttering projects... you'll be eligible for a chance to win the grand prize: a $1,000 gift certificate and a clutter project consultation.

The Clutter Challenge Contest will begin on January 1, 2010 and end at 11:59 p.m. on February 28, 2010. Click here, to enter at the Clutter Challenge community group. Your entry will include an essay of two hundred words or less describing your decluttering project and how it has dramatically improved your life and "before" and "after" pictures of your decluttering project.

...even if you don't win, you win. ...your improved home environment is your reward.

Photo credit: spitanddirt

Lessing's lessons in old age

2010-01-10T08:35:00.000-08:00

"Nobel prize-winner Doris Lessing's career suggests our increasing longevity may bring a creative and vital third age.

Doris Lessing's most ambitious work has come late in her life.

Photograph: Eamonn McCabe

In Doris Lessing's 1983 novel, The Diary of a Good Neighbour (originally published under the pseudonym Jane Somers), the narrator finds herself noticing an almost invisible section of the population: "Suddenly I looked up and down the streets and saw – old women. Old men too, but mostly old women... I had not seen them. That was because I was afraid of being like them."

Older people may become more visible in the years ahead. According to new projections from the Office for National Statistics, the number of people aged 100 or over in the UK could rise to 280,000 by 2050, while the number of pensioners could increase from 12 to 16 million. If this is correct, our idea of the life course may change.

Lessing, who turned 90 in October, went through her own period of invisibility. When she was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2007, there was surprise that she was still alive and still writing.

Lessing's writing of the last three decades is full of ideas that her earlier characters would not have understood. The shape of her career suggests how increasing longevity may change the pattern of a human life, revealing the possibility of a creative and vital third age.

She has said that her most recent novel, Alfred and Emily, will be her last. In an interview on the day she received the Nobel prize, Lessing said: "I don't do anything else ... if I hadn't [written] I think I would have frittered away my life having fun, which I'm quite good at". Perhaps she is still writing or, at least, is having fun. Either way, Doris Lessing (not for the first time) has shown us something of our future."

~ Tom Sperlinger

Seeing Old Age as a Never-Ending Adventure

2010-01-10T07:54:00.000-08:00

"After Betty Beauchemin’s husband died in 2006, she said, she just about shut down.

Then, one day in 2008 after attending a workshop on goal-setting near her home in Cranston, R.I., Ms. Beauchemin, 80, was sitting on a beach and had an inspiration: She wanted to go parasailing for the first time in her life — which she proceeded to do. That winter, she started skiing again.

Physiological luck plays a role, too. Ms. Telesmanich, whose sprained ankle has healed well, said she grew up athletic, playing sports with the boys, and never stopped.

Photo credit: Caters News via NY Times

For his part, Mr. Lackey, a retired builder in England, said he was preparing for his 90th birthday next May with an attempt to be the first person, of any age, to wing-walk both directions across the English Channel.

A friend from Mr. Lackey’s church, Sue Pitham, 49, said the first wing-walk seemed morbid to her, coming as it did from grief.

“I think the first one was a bit of a death wish, to be honest,” she said. “But then he realized he was an adrenaline junkie.”

Ms. Pitham said a stroke that Mr. Lackey suffered about six years ago slowed him down some, but not much. “He just needs a little more help getting on top of the plane now,” she said."

~ Kirk Johnson

Sugar Challenge: January 2010

2010-01-01T11:25:00.000-08:00

New Years brings out our longing to be better... to make next year, better than the last. And one way we all want to be better is in bodily appearance and fitness.

Sugar... and I'm not talking about naturally occurring sweetness in fruit and vegetables, but rather refined sugar and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) - THE most compelling gateway drugs on the planet.

I eat very little food with refined sugar... but my resolution for this year is... NO SUGAR.

Remembering the Scrolls of Og Mandino

2009-12-21T10:41:00.000-08:00

Scroll I

Today I begin a new life.

Scroll II

I will greet this day with love in my heart.

Scroll III

I will persist until I succeed.

Scroll IV

I am nature's greatest miracle.

Scroll V

I will live this day as if it is my last.

Scroll VI

Today I will be master of my emotions.

Scroll VII

I will laugh at the world (Keep perspective)

Scroll VIII

Today I will multiply my value a hundredfold.

Scroll IX

I will act now, I will act now, I will act now.

Scroll X

I will pray for guidance.

Og Mandino, "The Greatest Salesman in the World"

Diane Russell: The art of painting and drawing musicians

2009-12-19T14:18:00.000-08:00

My friend, artist Diane Russell... is in the news again.

And rightly so. Her work is high quality...

and her subject matter - entertainers... interesting.

Oregon Music News:

Reggie Houston is depicted sitting in the floodwaters of New Orleans, on Frenchman Street, playing Sidney Bechet on his soprano sax, tears in is eyes.

Sacred Ceremonies for Women

2009-12-15T12:56:00.000-08:00

Honoring the passages of women's lives,

Sacred Ceremonies for Women
brings together circles of women with like mind and intention to recognize and bless an honoree.

These sacred ceremonies raise the energy of love to manifest joy, healing and miracles in all who take part.

Ceremonies are created based on your faith and your traditions. Ceremony and ritual have been part of women's lives since the beginning of time; all expressions of faith and all religious traditions include many forms of ceremonial ritual.

Perhaps it is not merely fortuitous that the word ritual is contained in the word spiritual.
Sense of the sacred is contained in the human spirit, and in human actions, and in human desires.
If ritual makes these matters clear, then one of their greatest goals has been achieved." ~ Barbara G. Walker, Women’s Rituals – A Source Book
Opening to the sacred in the human spirit.

Win an Essay Contest about an Act of Kindness...

2009-12-15T08:20:00.000-08:00

The Old Farmers Almanac continues to be a reliable source information.
And... they have contests!

The 2010 Essay Contest
requires 200 words or less, about an act of kindness that you experienced.

Cash prizes (first, $250; second, $150; third, $100) will be awarded for the best entries.

The deadline is Friday, January 29, 2010.

London Named the Most Vegetarian-Friendly City in the World!

2009-12-09T12:12:00.000-08:00

London, the city known for its iconic "Beefeater" guards, has been named the most vegetarian-friendly city in the world by PETA! They chose London after considering not only the city's numerous vegetarian restaurants but also the massive variety of meatless ethnic cuisine and the fact that grocery stores and even steak houses in the city promote the mushrooming number of vegan options by indicating them with a green "V" on menus and labels.

Longtime PETA supporter Paul McCartney said, "After 40 years of touring as a vegetarian, I'm proud to say that when it comes to eating, there's no place like home."

London Mayor Boris Johnson said, "We have a noble history of vegetarianism, so it is great news to be crowned the best city on Earth to enjoy meat-free nosh."

Find out more at Meat.org.

"The Sixties" by Jenny Diski

2009-12-03T13:46:00.000-08:00

"I like to find myself in the writing of Jenny Diski. In her wonderful memoir Skating to Antarctica I recognized her London, and saw her eccentric postwar childhood as a mirror of my own. Her adventure to the ice cap has since become a symbol of my generation's desire to catch the earth before it falls (and we fall with it). The Sixties offers another insightful and accurate mirror of my particular London mod genome, reflecting much of what I remember, and reminding me of much I had forgotten." ~Pete Townshend

Most Heroic Pet Contest

2009-12-03T13:18:00.000-08:00

ENTER TO WIN A $1,000 GIFT CARD FOR YOUR HEROIC ANIMAL AND A CHANCE TO APPEAR WITH YOUR PET IN AARP THE MAGAZINE!

Entry period runs September 24, 2009, through January 4, 2010

Do you have a courageous cat, a daring dog, a brave bird, or a horse that heals? We’re looking for heroic animals who have significantly improved or saved someone's life. In the space below, tell us why your pet is a hero. Please keep your entry under 400 words—we’re not looking for any shaggy-dog stories here. AARP The Magazine staff will pick ten (10) finalists, and one winner will be selected by online readers’ choice voting beginning February 1, 2010. The Most Heroic Pet will be awarded a $1,000 gift card from a local or online pet retailer and will be announced on our website and in an upcoming issue of the magazine. Good luck!

What is My Body Mass Index (BMI)?

2009-12-03T13:08:00.000-08:00

Your Body Mass Index (BMI) is an estimate of your body fat, based on your height and weight.

The higher your BMI, the higher your risk of developing such conditions as heart disease, high blood pressure, sleep apnea, and type 2 diabetes.

While it is generally accurate, the BMI can read too high for athletes or others with large, heavy muscles. Likewise, it can exaggerate low readings for frail older people who have lost muscle mass.

Crone Violette Ruffley interviewed on The Get Inspired! Project

2009-11-30T14:04:00.000-08:00

Click here to hear the audio version of the interview with Violette. http://toni.byoaudio.com/files/media/violetteruffley.mp3

From the The Get Inspired! Project

"I look around and know that there are people who are doing big things, magnificent things; however, it’s my feeling that those of us who are the little ones, who can, if nothing more, offer a smile at a moment that someone needs it or a kind word when someone needs it, can really make a very great difference." ~Violette Ruffley

Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Violette, for joining us today on this interview and giving up your time. Before we begin with the questions, can you please introduce yourself?

Violette Ruffley: I’m Violette Ruffley and living in Clyde, North Carolina, which is such an exquisite area.

Toni: And what do you do, Violette?

Violette: Well, I’m a retired RN. I had worked in psychiatry and basically psychosocial problems — rape treatment center, care partner for AIDS patients — and most of my time really was in mental health.

Toni: With the work that you’ve done over your lifetime, Violette, and the work that you’re doing now, and you think about the word “inspiration”, who do you think you inspire and how do you think you might do that?

Violette: Well it comes as a surprise that I might be an inspiration to anyone. However, at this time and point in my life, it’s sort of … I’m almost 83, and I think “Good grief, what am I here for?” And if indeed I can be an inspiration to anyone, then it really makes one’s life worthwhile and it’s a form of validation.

Toni: When you are doing the work that you do, how do you think that that inspiration comes through you to people that you touch every day?

Violette: I would hope I come from a center of love and that this is projected out to the people I touch. I am a chaplain with hospice ,and the niche that I have really fallen into that is the one I really love and am most comfortable with is doing vigils the last hours of life; and that has been quite a wonderful experience.

Toni: When you are doing the vigils, can you give me and also the people who are reading this blog or listening to you … can you help me understand what that means exactly, what you’re doing?

Violette: Well, these are the patients who have been diagnosed as terminal. However, they are now really, for lack of a better word, actively dying; and they are in their last hours. I do hands-on healing, and when I am with the patient, I put my hands on them. And even though they are perhaps unconscious or highly medicated with morphine, they still can hear because that is the last sense to leave. And so I’m able to speak to them, to encourage them, to tell them that this is the moment that they will have relief and that they are so loved and that they are going to be peaceful and happy and moving toward the light.

Toni: And that certainly brings a whole different level of definition to the word inspiration for this project. With the work that you do and almost, really, with this type of work can take away two of the questions that I would ask you, but let me try to understand. Is the family there as well when you do this type of work?

Violette: Sometimes; and sometimes it’s giving them a respite so that they can go home and eat and rest for a while and then come back. The last experience I had, the patient’s brother was there, and I did not say very much while he was there. And once he left the room, then I felt really comfortable being able to encourage the patient to go ahead and go to the light.

I was told afterward that his regular volunteer had told him he could go, and that his brother had told him it was alright, he could go, and yet he struggled breathing; and it is a struggle. Their breath is very labored. But within really minutes of when I told him he could leave, he did go.

And when the nurse came back in the room, she took my chair and she was checking to see his breath sounds, and I was standing at the end of the bed. During that entire time I was with him, his eyes were almost closed. At the instant that he took his last breath, his eyes just flew open, and I felt the presence of angels in the room. It was an inspiration to me, and it always is. I feel tremendous energy surrounding me.

Toni: Wow, that’s beautiful. Do you train others to do this type of work that you do, and the way that you do it, Violette?

Violette: Well, I do another type of work which is based actually originally from A Course In Miracles, and this is called attitudinal healing which Dr. Jerry Jampolsky presented after he experienced reading the course; it had changed his life. He has started centers and introduced people to attitudinal healing principles, and these are the principles that I facilitate.

Toni: Can you help us understand what that is?

Violette: Well, the lovely part of principles, first of all, it’s based on the very first principle which is the essence of your being is love and that thing goes through the 12 principles. For instance, dealing with death. Since love is eternal, death need not be viewed as fearful. I like to take at least …

If I may digress … Normally I present a principle per week; however, there are two principles which really involve more time – the one which deals with forgiveness, and then the principle I just mentioned about death, because I ask people to visualize how they want their own death to be handled. Western culture has a tendency to be very fearful of acknowledging one’s own mortality, and people step back from it.

I don’t know where this comes from, but if you think about even the process of making a person up to look proper in a coffin to really give them life appearance, and people will even comment and say “Oh, he looks just as good as he did in real life.” So there is that fear, and my sense is that we need to learn how to die before we can live.

Toni: Wow … that’s really incredible. And is that all part of that process and the teaching that comes with the attitudinal healing?

Violette: Yes, but there is a great deal more to it, and the principles of attitudinal healing place a responsibility of your thoughts and your actions and your beliefs squarely on your own shoulders. There is nothing outside of us; it’s all within. Whether it’s looking for happiness or projecting victimhood out on life situations, it draws it all back to the self.

Toni: That is so important. So you are a facilitator and help others with these principles?

Violette: Yes.

Toni: I see.

Violette: However, believe it or not, it’s very difficult to get people to sign up for the class. People don’t want to acknowledge that they have a problem; they’re really in denial.

Toni: Based on the experiences that you’ve had and the experiences that you are giving families with the other part of your work that you do, I can’t imagine why people wouldn’t want to learn that from you, so I’m really happy for the awareness that you’re bringing to this through the Get Inspired! Project as well. I want to ask you, though, before we run out of time here, Violette, what inspires you? When you’re seeking inspiration to fill yourself up, what do you seek?

Violette: Really I have to touch nature. I have to see growing things, the sun shining, even the rain. Birds. Birds are very meaningful to me. A beautiful tree, a flower … these are my joys.

Toni: Are there certain moments when you know that you’re in a state that you need to again fill yourself up to be inspired and are there — outside of what you just mentioned, nature and experiencing that and seeing the beauty in that — are there other resources that you reach for or tools that you might use to stay inspired to do the immense work that you do?

Violette: I probably play a real avoidance game in terms of I do not have a television nor a radio. I do not read newspapers. To me, it’s the same news with a different date and different names and different locations. I do walk away from doom and gloom, and I seek those that are living in joy and living in the now moment.

Toni: Have you always been that way?

Violette: No. No; in truth, I would say that probably from puberty on until I was in my 50s, I was at one level of depression greater or lesser. And in truth, when I was introduced to A Course In Miracles, it did change my life because I always perceived myself as a victim.

Toni: And so you went through that course, and that is where the learning began for you to move out of that gloom and doom?

Violette: Yes. The day I read the lesson that said you are not a victim of the world you see — well, it took me about a week to get through that – “What do you mean I’m not a victim, of course I’m a victim!” Oh, it took a while to really see that I had choices but simply did not take them.

Toni: Gosh, Violette, I tell you, you really have … this has been a wonderful interview. It’s been a very gentle interview, and it’s just been a very powerful interview, and I’m so lucky to meet people like you and to be able to share people like you with the numbers of people that are coming to the Get Inspired! Project. And I know that you’ve given me something to think about in this interview, and I know that you will give others something to think about.

Violette: May I just add one thing?

Toni: Absolutely!

Violette: I look around and know that there are people who are doing big things, magnificent things; however, it’s my feeling that those of us who are the little ones, who can, if nothing more, offer a smile at a moment that someone needs it or a kind word when someone needs it, can really make a very great difference.

Toni: And you’ve done that today, and you will do that for the people who are reading this and listening to you.

Violette: Thank you.

Toni: Thank you so much for this today, Violette, and it was a pleasure to talk to you and thank you for your time, and take care.

Violette: Thank you for permitting me to share.

Crone artist Helen Redman

2009-11-29T21:10:00.000-08:00

Listen to a five minute excerpt from crone Helen Redman's talk at the Women's History Museum on November 21. Learn about the history of the Feminist Art Movement from the people who made it!

Also new to Helen's site is her Lifeline of Art: 1962-2009 Pregnancy, Children and Grandchildren.

And a recent "Into View" interview with art critic Robert Pincus.

The Beauty of Wisdom

2009-11-29T19:47:00.000-08:00

Photojournalist and Crone to the Bone member, Robbie Kaye traveled the US photographing and interviewing beautiful women in their 70's, 80's and 90's for her project, "The Beauty of Wisdom" to invite an expansion of perception for beauty in a culture where it is so heavily focused on youth and to preserve the history of these women and their weekly ritualistic visits to the beauty parlor.

Crones, nymphs and creativity

2009-11-29T16:47:00.000-08:00

We've got some very creative people in the Crone to the Bone community. Here's a recent sample of cronito Ron Tocknell's Photoshopping ways...

He saw elfishness in this ageless cronita, so used this photo...

and brought out the Wood Nymph that lives within.

With an artist's eye and Photoshop, Ron created a beautiful character for his Fantasy Album.

Crone psychic Barbara Mackey to be on The Discovery Channel's Animal Planet

2009-11-17T10:33:00.000-08:00

Please tune in Sunday, November 22nd 10:00 pm EST to The Discovery Channel - Animal Planet's new TV series "The Haunted"...

to listen to Barbara Mackey psychically communicate with animals that have passed on and are trying to send messages to someone who will be their voice. These animals have been tortured, experimented on or sacrificed.

Barbara will be featured on three different segments including the November 22nd and 29th. For further details go to http://www.barbaramackey.com/

An amazing online resource

2009-11-13T09:21:00.000-08:00

If I never share another link with you... let this be the one... Naturalpedia

Find information on key health concepts, nutrients, macronutrients, plants and herbs, drugs, health conditions and diseases, foods and beverages, anatomy, ingedients, supplements, chemicals, hormones and biochemistry, treatment modalities, biological functions, substances, animals, concepts, adjectives, medical adjectives, medical terms, objects, organizations, persons, biological measures, where, who, physiology, properties, actions, and when...

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Its a virtual global jam...

2009-11-13T08:11:00.000-08:00

"Everyone needs someone to stand by them" is a montage done with the collaboration of musicians and music lovers from around the world.

The brainchild of Playing For Change: Peace Through Music, whose mission is to connect the world through music... "by providing resources (including, but not limited to facilities, supplies, and educational programs) to musicians and their communities around the world."

Yeah... I thought you might like it too.

The Taironas plead for change

2009-11-13T07:18:00.000-08:00

Add the Taironas to the indigenous voices sounding warnings in recent times... along with the Australian Aboriginals, The Hopi, the Blackfeet and Nepalese, etc...
Prajwal Ratna Vajracharya is a Nepalese dancer who was instructed to break tradition and share previously secret, sacred ceremonies to the world. The purification ceremony is intended to heal and strengthen the human race...
we must save ourselves is the rallying cry of the 11th hour.

Award-winning British author and filmmaker, cronito Alan Ereira, made the first film about the Kogi Indians of the Andes, "From the Heart of the World: The Elder Brothers' Warning." (Thats him in the back... and below.)

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From LinkTV, "After four centuries of seclusion, the Kogi, considered to be the last surviving pre-Colombian civilization, asked filmmaker Ereira to visit their homeland in the Sierra Nevada mountains of northern Colombia. From the Heart of the World: The Elder Brothers’ Warning delivers their prophetic message to the industrialized world. Seeing themselves as guardians of life on earth, the Kogi have a profound spiritual understanding of the bond between humankind and the natural world — a bond that, they insist, must be respected. This powerful film stands as an especially cogent and moving plea for ecological wisdom."

I've many mixed feelings here... the loudest being, leave them alone... support their isolation. If we have learned anything from the Native American genocide experiment... it should be that all interactions support and protect the cultural diversity and local eco-knowledge that indigine have. The mission of the Tairona Foundation addresses that through projects for "buildings and land-purchase. Whatever is bought becomes the legal property of the indigenous community itself." The Tairona's belief is that a failure to respect "anything beyond our own immediate needs" is the issue. "So the Trust exists as part of the effort to change us, as well as to help them."

The lack of respect that the Tairona's speak of is a spiritual crisis resulting from a lack of connection with nature... both mother nature and inner nature. They don't speak of eco-consciousness as if its an issue unto itself, separate and distinct... no, the Tairona address the larger picture of the spirit that moves a people. I'll bet the Tairona see us as panic-stricken, can't shake this survival-mode awakeness, tugging at our boot-straps righteousness. Capitalism, baby... its a religion that eats its young for comfort and addiction.

The Kogis have shown great resilience in evading the cultural assimilation that most indigenous people have suffered. Their aversion to outside influences has been key to Tairona survival. So, it is to their credit that they are opening up to the outside world... partnering with a traditional enemy in order to survive... and becoming friends with that partner. I welcome the spirit of their intentions.

Painting the Future

2009-11-12T14:09:00.000-08:00

From cave drawings to computer graphics...

We humans have been painting our futures,
planning our destinies...
some are pure gold...
others hued in blue.

Click here to go to The Crone to the Bone on Zazzle homepage.

Old-timer interviewer called inappropriate

2009-11-12T12:53:00.000-08:00

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It's said, "The truth hurts."
Seems cronito Larry King's questioning disturbed someone's comfort zone with truth.

The LA Times reports that beauty queen Carrie Prejean walked off Larry King Live on Tuesday, in the middle of her interview, after calling him "inappropriate."

King asked Prejean about her settlement with Miss California USA.
King asked Prejean why she dropped claims of libel, slander and religious discrimination.
King continued on with: "You can't even say why you settled?"

King turned to a caller, who said "I'm a gay man and I love pageants,"
...Prejean disconnected her mic.

I'll bet Larry's interviews that end badly, get more press than the studio-perfect zen moments.

And why pressure beauty queens for intelligent answers?

And why even mention the warning Prejean gives young girls about her homemade self-pleasuring sex tape... "because you might get famous."

That's showbiz... ta da...

Judging the dance and the dancer

2009-11-11T07:53:00.000-08:00

Ever the persnickety one, Cronito Len Goodman, was out of character when he paternally encouraged whippersnapper Aaron Carter with, "I think you're an inspiration to all young people that anything is possible. If you were my son, I would be so proud of you, but more importantly, you be proud of yourself because you've been great."

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Aaron Carter was eliminated from the Dancing with the Stars competition last night. His dance card expired... but he seemed different... older, more self-possessed. He said he learned from Donny Osmond - who also grew up in the public eye. He learned much about ballroom dancing from Karina. And he achieved a physical fitness regime tht he hopes to maintain.

Criticized by some for shedding tears after a surprisingly low score, Aaron went on to channel his runaway emotions into an explosive and deeply felt sensitivity on the dance floor. You rawked Aaron! Bravo!

Growing up on the street...

2009-11-10T12:07:00.000-08:00

Sesame Street...
40 years later.

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Eric Frazier said, "I suppose it's OK to admit it now: I was once afraid of Count von Count. ...the cute little vampire Muppet on "Sesame Street" who loves to count everything. There ...seemed to be something ...menacing about him, a suggestion that maybe he'd get tired of numbers ...and turn to the necks of preschoolers like me."

Using humor and affection to de-escalate conflict

2009-11-10T11:19:00.000-08:00

Having access to humor and affection during a conflict is invaluable
because it helps to de-escalate bad feelings and leads to better understanding.

Rather than shutting down communication in the midst of an argument,
people who can stay present with one another
have a much better opportunity to resolve issues through their conflicts,
repair hurt feelings, and build positive regard.

But this good work must begin long before the conflict starts;
it's got to be grounded in those dozens of ordinary,
day-to-day exchanges of emotional information and interest.

John M. Gottman, Ph.D.

Joan DeClaire

Soupy Sales, R.I.P.

2009-10-23T09:24:00.000-07:00

Did you know that Soupy Sales had a kid show? I didn't...
I remember him from the variety shows of the 60's and 70's.
He was from my father's generation... along with Dean, Frank, Merle, Sammy, Rodney, Rich and Flip.

Soupy Sales was the Steve-O of his day...
an impish humor, sprouting fractal increments of charm. ...elusive and earnest. ...in an Adam Sandler sort of way. And Pee Wee may be Soupy's comedic bastard child. I dunno... Whatever... Soupy was doing TV when it was a frontier.

Thanks for the laughs, Soupy....and the pie-in-the-face.

VIDEO: Soupy Sales reminiscing with a nightclub audience about the New Years' Day 1965 ad-lib that got him kicked off the air for a week.

"...a little bit rock & roll."

2009-10-21T16:56:00.000-07:00

The Donnie and Marie Show wasn't cool enough for my tastes... but my 1st grade son loved them, so their squeaky clean image was a welcome presence in our home.

Donnie said he was "...a little bit rock & roll," ...and Marie "a little bit country." ...the years rolled by, the Osmonds were a distant memory of Mormons, Utah and the Great Salt Lake.

Fast forward to Dancing with the Stars 2009, Donny Osmond is 51 - still brimming with decency... and damn sexy while doing it. Donnie has aroused feelings in my crone bones, while not very decent... are definitely brimming! Lawdy, Lawdy... Donnie Darko!

When in Rome...

2009-10-21T15:41:00.000-07:00

According to CNN, Arizona police are searching for a man who allegedly ran down his daughter and her friend...
Faleh Hassan Almaleki, was angry with his daughter "as she had become too 'Westernized' and was not living according to the family's traditional Iraqi values.

Guess he hadn't heard about cultural assimilation...

Throw someone in a lake... they get wet. And kids especially love to splash around in the moment... soaking it all in.

Father needs consider the daughter's understanding of the culture he chose for them, as an asset to the family... rather than a threat. A wise father should proudly embrace his children's social adaptation...
then again, what Western values are we talking about?

Whatever it is... she's much more likely to grow in strength, if there's loving guidance to come home to. ...and she's much more likely to want to continue coming home.

Maya and Helen

2009-10-21T14:36:00.000-07:00

Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and Helen Keller's "The Story of My Life" are compelling autobiographies of their formative years. In their beautifully crafted stories, they describe the hardships they endured and the roles played by others who enabled them in their eventual triumphant achievements.
Maya and Helen were gifted children whose brilliance was shrouded with seemingly impossible barriers, but each found their way through those obstacles with the persistent help of others. Helen acknowledged the loving support of others with; "Thus it is that my friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges, and enabled me to walk serene and happy in the shadow cast by my deprivation."

Helen and Maya were both born into the stratified culture of the American south, but on the proverbial opposite side of the tracks. Helen's birth on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama to Kate and Captain Arthur Keller, a cotton plantation owner and editor of a weekly local newspaper; was into an upper middle class white family. They were devoted to her, but confounded by her eventual inability to communicate, see or hear. Maya's birth in St. Louis, Missouri on April 4, 1928 was followed three years later with her parent's divorce. She and her older brother Bailey, the only constant in Maya's life, were sent to live with their grandmother - owner of the only general merchandise store in the very poor, black side of Stamps, Arkansas.

Maya's paternal grandmother, already an old woman with a grown son whose disabilities would insure that he could never be independent – took on the additional responsibility of Maya and her older brother. Grandma, who they called Momma, was a stabilizing influence in their life; albeit, an austere character with a no nonsense approach to survival as a southern Negro. Grandma expected them to be clean, well mannered and educated - Maya and Bailey learned math and reading skills much earlier than their peers, could run the cash register at Momma's store and learned to speak respectfully even to those who Maya believed to be unworthy.

Helen's saving grace was her teacher, Anne Sullivan, who was uniquely qualified to understand Helen; for she too had lost the majority of her sight at the age of five. While attending the Perkins Institute for the Blind, Anne had two operations on her eyes, which led to her regaining enough sight to be able to read normal print for short periods of time. Following graduation from Perkins, Anne began the difficult search for work. When she received an offer to work as the teacher of Helen Keller, a deaf-blind mute child, she accepted willingly.
Helen had become gravely ill when she was nineteen months old and was expected to die. When the fever subsided, Helen's family rejoiced believing their daughter to be well again. But Helen's mother soon noticed how her daughter was failing to respond when the dinner bell was rang or when she passed her hand in front of her daughter's eyes. It became apparent that Helen's illness had left her blind and deaf. The following few years proved very hard for Helen and her family. Helen became a very difficult child, given to outrageous temper tantrums. Relatives thought she should be put into an institution. By the time Helen was six her family had become desperate. They understood that Helen would never see or hear again but had not given up hope. Believing that Helen could be taught, they sought the advice of Alexander Graham Bell, who was concentrating on what he considered his true vocation - the teaching of deaf children. Bell recommended a teacher for Helen - that woman was Anne Sullivan. Helen states that "The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me."

Unlike Helen's educated parents with the means to search for a solution to Helens deprivation; Maya's parents were poor black descendants of slaves, who found their mode of survival in the underground economy - a world of fast money generated by gambling, alcohol sales and prostitution. It was a disorderly way of life that broke the spirit of many, destroyed budding relationships and confounded the minds of the already wounded. It is not surprising that Maya's parents were unable to maintain a home where children could thrive. Maya and Bailey had lived with Momma in Stamps, Arkansas for five years, when they were sent back to Saint Louis to be with their mother. This move took a turn for the worse when eight year old Maya was raped by her mother's boyfriend, followed by his mysterious avenged murder. The devastation of those events caused Maya to become mute to everyone except her brother. Less than a year after arriving in St. Louis, she and Bailey were sent back to their grandmother's home because no one could handle Maya's grim retreat into silence.

The world of language is a common theme in both Helen and Maya's lives. Maya's return to spirited conversation was assisted by Mrs. Bertha Flowers, a woman Maya described as being "the aristocrat of Black Stamps"; a woman who made Maya "proud to be Negro." Bertha asked Maya to memorize and recite aloud poetry and passages from books, explaining that "language is man's way of communication with his fellow man and it is language alone which separates him from the lower animals." Thus began Maya's "lessons of living" under Bertha's gracious tutelage.
Helen's teacher – Anne, immediately started teaching six year old Helen to finger spell; although Helen could repeat these finger movements she could not understand what they meant, for she had not yet grasped the meaning of words. On April 5, 1887, Anne led Helen to a water pump and all that changed. As Anne pumped water over Helen's hand, Anne spelled out the word water in the girl's free hand. Something about this explained the meaning of words within Helen, and Anne could immediately see in her face that she finally understood. Helen recounted the incident: "As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten, a thrill of returning thought, and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me."

The gift of words, together with the loving support of family and friends provided the sustenance needed by Maya and Helen to overcome the obstacles on their life's path and become the outstanding authors we know them to be. Helen evolved into a world-famous speaker and author whose advocacy for the handicapped is expressed in her following words. "The public must learn that the blind man is neither genius nor a freak nor an idiot. He has a mind that can be educated, a hand which can be trained, ambitions which it is right for him to strive to realize, and it is the duty of the public to help him make the best of himself so that he can win light through work." Maya's graceful prose rose above the bigotry of the day and was expressed following her high school graduation as; "The depths had been icy and dark, but now a bright sun spoke to our souls. …I was a proud member of the wonderful, beautiful Negro race." Maya's childhood chronicle ends with her entrance into motherhood - with her own mother's supportive reassurance of her maternal abilities. "See, you don't have to think about doing the right thing. If you're for the right thing, then you do it without thinking."

Maya and Helen's poetic, yet pragmatic way of expressing themselves moved me greatly. Both display an air of innocence as well as that of an old soul, timeless and wise. Their writing is simply put, not arrogant or sophisticated, but always intelligent and compassionate. Helen's descriptions of nature, the ocean and seasons leave little doubt that she appreciated God's creation no less than someone with their physical sensory organs intact. Her descriptions of mundane challenges, such as academic tests, reinforce an understanding of her shared humanity, of her eager willingness to participate wholly in life, or as she said "life is either a daring adventure, or nothing."

Condensed version of my feminine journey... so far

2009-10-21T11:23:00.000-07:00

My feminine journey was from a scared little girl, to a freaked-out teenager, to a trainwreck of a young woman. I can't remember not being depressed. There had been so few times in my childhood I had laughed... I remember all of them... can count them on my fingers, and have a couple left over.
I cannot separate my femininity from my depression in the early those years. The two were intertwined – the chicken and the egg.

The child coped as children do... in play and imagination; the teenager just wanted to hide. ...not all the time, but definitely during moon time.
Perhaps ancient memories of women retreating to a moon tent were singing in her mind... but there was no one to remind her of those traditions... no one to teach her to sing her femininity. Instead, the entrance into the mother stage, the beginning of decades of moon cycles... was treated as an annoyance and a burden. So I hid in my closet.

I was 18 when my first son was born. Everything changed in my world... my priorities, my world view, the meaning of life...
No one needed to tell me that breastfeeding is the best option... mother nature had already convinced me of the natural and logical choice.

My first 12 years were spent on a ranch, observing horses, cows, pigs, dogs, cats, and other mammals breastfeeding their young. Why would I want my baby to feed on the milk of another animal or a mysterious powder mixed with water? No... my feminine intuition knew... my animal instinct knew no other option than breastfeeding.

My trust in the intelligence of the feminine process at work, though unbeknownst to me at the time, went deeper than explanation or reason. ...but I have found... the merits of breastfeeding cannot be over-emphasized.

In general, caring for the families is an investment in a healthy community, not caring - invites ill and incarcerated populations. The most important investment a society can make is to protect and support childhood with healthy families and communities.

Women in the US opt out every day to return to work after a short three-month maternity leave... it is usually the unfortunate, best option... for the overall good of the family. After studying the family plans of other nations, I've determined that America's walk is out of sync with its talk... we are not civilized... we are still in the cave, digging deeper... creating chasms of bureaucracy so deep that only a radical purging of the system could release those caught in its web - the children and the children's children.

The work of changing a culture and a system cannot be done by the mothers, by the parents... they need to raise children... then who? Well, ...me, for one... and you, and you too. I returned to school at 50, a natural-born social change agent, majored in Child/Family Studies, conflict resolution and sustainability. ...what I learned is not what I set out to learn.

I learned to speak up.

I used to be shy... no, really.

(After 10 years at a drawing board and I transitioned to computer design for another 15... perfect job for a recluse.)

My time at the university coincided with my menopausal transition... I was grateful to not be working a full-time job in a male-dominated environment like I had done for 25 years. I was grateful to be pursuing an education relevant to my interests as a woman, a mother, a grandmother and a community member and grateful for experiences and opportunities I never imagined.

Because the university education and menopause coincided, my willingness to speak up (bear witness) was reinforced from two different directions, from both sides of the brain. All that and throw in a dozen extended meditation retreats and an emphasis on serving community... and you have a crone on a mission. Sometimes my inner 14 year-old still wants to hide in the closet... but the 57 year-old budding crone reminds her theres work to do.

Every stage of maturity has its challenges, and the teenager and the plus or minus 50-something have a lot in common...

transition...

a transition defined by the shedding of blood.

...by the ability to reproduce naturally.

I'm beyond the transition pains and sweats, and am now about the crone equivalent of 12 again... but without the jump ropes and jacks

...and laughter is often.

I love being a crone.

"Mavis Lindgren: Grandma Wears Running Shoes" Re-post

2009-10-21T10:29:00.000-07:00

I share this article with you because it is about a woman who inspired me.
The month I turned 40, she ran the Portland marathon...
she was 85.
I clipped a picture of her from the Willamette Weekly newspaper, crossing the finishing line... smiling serenely and glowing...
while other, much younger runners around were gasping miserably.

I pinned her pic onto my bulletin board at work. I looked at Mavis everyday.
She reminded me to live fully.
I still have that picture, in a drawer - where its faded, browning paper is kept with the secrets of happiness.

The following article is written by someone who knew Mavis, personally and professionally... Patrick Roden, RN ...it's a tale of an athletic crone, from her nurse's perspective.

...It was now late afternoon and the sea of runners had dwindled to a trickle of determined souls. The frequent and now familiar static that preceded a message from the EMS broke the airwaves. An elderly woman was reported down near the 18-mile mark, in our territory. I waited for a person fitting the description to pass, and no one did. Strapping on my first aid kit, I set out to investigate.
Running upstream, I began to think, how elderly could they mean? Who ever it was, he or she had gone 18 miles, and this was a marathon after all…….50, maybe 60, I thought. As I rounded the bend I saw a young woman attending the injured runner who looked like Mother Theresa in running shorts! The young woman explained that another runner had cut in front of the injured woman and knocked her down as she stepped towards the curb. As I listened, I assessed the situation. The injuries included an obviously fractured wrist as well as a small bump on the head. "Her name is Mavis," the young woman said.
"Mavis, I would like to escort you to the first aid station," I began… "Young man, I’m going to finish this race," she politely interrupted. After a few seconds of negotiating, I held up her injured arm and we briskly took off for the station (or so I thought).
Amazed, I blurted out "How old are you?" "I’m 85." She pointed to her number pinned to the front of her T-shirt. "Every year, they give me the number of my age. This year I’m number 85. " What do you mean each year?" I asked.
Mavis Lindgren had run all over the world. She had appeared many times on TV, radio, and magazines such as Runner’s World, Sports Illustrated, and The New York Times, and been mentioned in books such as Age Wave (Ken Dychtwald) and Grandma Wears Running Shoes (Patricia Horning Benton). She was no stranger to Portland, either. All along the course there were signs encouraging her and the cheers followed her every step! Two middle-aged women ran up and hugged her exclaiming that they wanted to be just like her when they grew up.
Mavis and I reached the finish line arm-in-arm, right into interviews for the 6’oclock news (I have the video). I was asked to escort her for the entire race the next year in 1993, and it became a tradition.
She retired from running at age 90 after the 1997 marathon. It was her 75th and final 26.2-mile outing. Phil Knight of Nike, had a custom pair of "Air Mavis" running shoes made especially for her final marathon. Her two daughters and grandchildren accompanied us and it was an emotional finale to an illustrious running career.

What makes her story all the more exceptional to me is that at age 62, Mavis was leading a sedentary life, spending most of time reading, writing and knitting. She had suffered four bouts of pneumonia in five years and, as a retired nurse, she knew the antibiotics weren’t the long-term solution. Something had to change. A doctor urged her to join an early bird walking group. At age 70, encouraged by her son, she ran her first marathon! Two years later, she established a record of 4:33.05, and for the next eight years, held world’s best time for women 70 and over. And at 84 she finished the Los Angeles marathon in 6 hours 45 minutes-the fastest woman in her age category. "After I started running, I never had another cold," she said.
Asked what his message was, Ghandi replied: "My life is my message." This could well be said about Mavis Lindgren.

Rogue or Rouge?

2009-10-21T09:26:00.000-07:00

An article from The Christian Science Monitor, "Wait a minute: Is Sarah Palin "Going Rogue" -or "Going Rouge?""
...moved this writer to channel her inner opinionated, outspoken ...isn't life a mirth comment? I share with you...

Just for fun... Ima gonna order several Rouge books as Xmas gifts... for my special conservative friends.
...or maybe I shoulda read it first and then decide. Uh-huh, that's what Ima gonna do. Ima hopin' it'll expose the true heart of rogue hockey mom's lipstick courtin' ways.

As someone who's done time in the trenches of social services... I looked past Sarah's natural charm when she paraded her fertile breeding ground. In a time when earth is taxed by human population demands... we don't need leadership sending out the message to mindlessly reproduce, even into the risky years.
I understand that wee babies are loveable, but I believe that America recognized that leadership, perhaps... especially in a woman, needs better to know, ...minimally, ...mainstream news level politics and geography, than wanton reproduction.
No, I really wanted to like Sarah... for so many reasons, but cannot absolve her message to young adults... already struggling with their own hormonal rushes... and mass unemployment in their age range. ...cannot.

Kenyan Grannies Learn Karate:

2009-10-17T08:35:00.001-07:00

Security is your Responsibility

Smoking Bans Reduce Heart Attacks and Disease

2009-10-17T08:29:00.000-07:00

Bans on smoking in places like restaurants, offices and public buildings reduce cases of heart attacks and heart disease, according to a report released Thursday by a federally commissioned panel of scientists.

The report, issued by the Institute of Medicine, concluded that exposure to secondhand smoke significantly increased the risk of a heart attack among both smokers and nonsmokers. The panel also said it found that a reduction in heart problems began fairly quickly after a smoking ban was instituted and that exposure to low or fleeting levels of secondhand smoke could cause cardiovascular problems.

“Even a small amount of exposure to secondhand smoke can increase blood clotting, constrict blood vessels and can cause a heart attack,” said Dr. Neal L. Benowitz, a professor of medicine, psychiatry and biopharmaceutical sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, and a member of the panel.

“Smoking bans need to be put in place as quickly as possible,” Dr. Benowitz added. “The longer we wait, the more disease we are accepting.”

The report, commissioned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, examined data from 11 studies from communities in Canada, Italy, Scotland and the United States.

The degree of heart attack reduction in those communities varied widely, from 6 percent to 47 percent, but every study showed a decline.

“The evidence is now overwhelming,” said Dr. Richard D. Hurt, director of the nicotine dependence center at the Mayo Clinic, who was not involved in the report.

“Secondhand smoke kills a lot of people,” Dr. Hurt said, “and one of the mechanisms by which it does is through exposure and the effect on the cardiovascular system.”

The committee said that none of the 11 studies were optimal in method or in data collection, making some significant questions unanswerable. Some studies were small, some were conducted over a short time, and only two, in Scotland and in Monroe County, Ind., noted whether heart attack victims were smokers or nonsmokers.

These limitations left the committee unable to determine why reduction rates varied so much. But some members speculated that places like New York State, which had some smoking restrictions in place before instituting more comprehensive bans, would already have been showing improvement, so reductions from bans would be smaller.

“Evidence was not strong enough to say the degree” to which smoking bans reduce risk or the degree to which “individual lifestyle, community and societal factors can also influence the magnitude” of heart disease reduction, said Dr. Lynn R. Goldman, the panel’s chairwoman, a professor of environmental health sciences at Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Michael Siegel, professor of community health sciences at Boston University, said that such limitations were significant flaws and that the panel was being “sensationalistic” about the impact of smoking bans.

“Anybody could have told you without any kind of review that smoking bans don’t raise heart attacks,” Dr. Siegel said, but “it could be that they have an exceedingly small effect” and that reductions were “just occurring anyway” because of improvements in treatment of heart disease.

A panel member, Dr. Eric D. Peterson, a cardiologist at Duke, said that even if reduction rates were small, the studies supported bans.

Dr. Goldman said the committee found that “a cause-and-effect relationship exists between heart disease generally and secondhand smoke exposure.”

“It increased the risk of coronary heart disease by about 25 to 30 percent,” she added.

Dr. Siegel said that connection was “unequivocal,” but that a significant risk applied only in people who have severe heart disease. “An otherwise healthy person is not going to walk into a bar for 20 minutes and have a heart attack,” he said.

Seventeen states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia ban smoking in bars, restaurants and workplaces, while 14 other states ban smoking in one or two of those types of establishments, according to Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights, an advocacy group. More than 350 cities and towns have similar bans.

The panel’s report echoes two recent studies which found that one year after smoking bans were put in place, the average rate of heart attacks had dropped by 17 percent, and continued to drop more over time.

David Sutton, a spokesman for Philip Morris U.S.A., said that he could not comment on the institute report until the company had had a chance to review it, but that the company supported smoking bans in public areas.

“Private business owners should have the flexibility” to “cater to smokers and nonsmokers alike,” Mr. Sutton said, but “there are sufficient reasons to warrant measures that regulate smoking in public places, places where people must go.”

By PAM BELLUCK
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Beef Industry Threatens California School over Michael Pollan Speech

2009-10-17T08:24:00.000-07:00

Administrators at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo are coming under fire for refusing to allow the bestselling food expert Michael Pollan to give a lecture on campus about sustainable food policies. Pollan was scheduled to give a one-hour lecture last night. But the format of the event was changed after a top executive at Harris Ranch Beef Company threatened to withdraw a pledged $500,000 donation for a new meat processing facility on the campus.
After Harris Ranch Beef issued the threat, the public university invited a professor with close ties to the meat industry to appear along with Pollan. Michael Pollan has been a longtime critic of agribusiness and meat production. He recently appeared on Democracy Now! and discussed pigs in factory farms.

Michael Pollan: “They administer antibiotics to these animals on a regular basis, because they could not survive without them. And the waste goes down directly below the animals into this giant cesspool that’s flushed, two or three times a day, out. And, I mean, they’re just—you know, they’re incubators for disease. The sows remain in crates their whole lives, so they can be conveniently inseminated, and they have their babies right there in their crates. You know, to go to one of these places is to stop eating industrial pork, basically. I mean, if we could see into this industrial meat production, it would change the way most of us eat.”

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/16/headlines#17

Crone Magazine - Women Coming of Age

2009-09-04T15:39:00.000-07:00

Thought you might be interested in the Crone Magazine. This is a new publication with only two issues. Take a look... and if you like, support a sister.

Here's their mission statement and about us blurb... I think you'll be intrigued... I was.

Mission Statement

Crone: Women Coming of Age explores the gifts and concerns of women who seek to fully embrace Earth’s cycles of life and death and transformation. We honor the wisdom of long experience and the compassion an open heart.

About Us

Our readers are women who identify with a new, yet very ancient way of growing older and who wish to help effect a cultural change that will return wise elders to their natural and honored place in society. Crone magazine, launched at the Fall Equinox, 2008, is the successor magazine to Crone Chronicles: a Journal of Conscious Aging, which ran from 1989 through 2001. Whereas the purpose of Crone Chronicles was to help activate the Crone archetype within contemporary culture, Crone magazine assumes that this activation has taken place. For more and more women, the word “crone” is no longer scary: thousands of women now self-identify as crones.

It is inspiring to see the crone spirit grow in strength.

It is empowering to see the crone spirit grow in awareness.

It is blessed to see the crone community embrace.

Here's the link to past issues of Crone Magazine:

http://www.cronemagazine.com/issues/issues.html

Crone artist - Helen Redman

2009-09-04T14:22:00.000-07:00

"Now it is my intent to be a cybercrone beyond my lifetime so others can find a guiding hand to creatively live the seasons of their lives." ~Helen Redman

Hats off to : Helen Redman, an artist who has explored femininity.

Her pregnancy paintings ignited old memories of my pregnancies and

her crone explorations feel like the rhythms of loss and birth...

endings and beginnings...

new ways of living, of being.

an identity not separate from the past...

inclusive of it, yet more than it...

cronehood,

a distinction often feared both in anticipation and in fact.

Helen's Beauty of Old collection particularly touched me...

http://www.birthingthecrone.com/pages/directbeauty.html

9/30/2009 Crone to the Bone launched!

2009-08-30T13:59:00.000-07:00

Crone to the Bone launched into the global cyber-village.

After listening in on a conversation between two budding 50-something crones, I realized that the generation that burned the bra... still isn't wearing one!

The boomers, with or without bras... still have attitude. ...even more in fact - they're the best educated generation to reach cronehood yet.

The time is now for these smart, powerful women to birth hope and vision change, to invoke our collective intention for higher good... and to bring forth the goddess within.

The crone is one who can stand alone...

She is also one who holds the keys to community bonding and bridging...

to the benefits of cooperation over competition...

to the simplicity of silence.

2009-08-20T08:50:00.000-07:00

I don't know what wild hair moved me to start a group called Crone to the Bone...
but that's how I'd been feeling....
it was like my inner radical punk, vegan grandmother came out.
I wanted to be part of a group with an in-your-face, primitive name...
not a neatly starched apron-wearing, apple pie baking crone name.
(actually, lets keep the apple pie);
...I wanted to talk to other women of maturity who were knee-deep in real life...
family, career, relationships, businesses, property, stress... stuff...
who'd rather stay home and talk via their computer.
Women different than many we see everyday....
yet, one and the same....
so much smarts, humor, wisdom and grace...
expressed in gently chosen words, reassuring phrases and supportive, smart-ass expressions of truth...
and amazing stories of determined existence and bouncing back.
Cyber-grandmas...

I have a few questions about crones...
Please, tell me what you really think...
and it will inform my questions...
and who knows, maybe even be an answer?

Answer any or all questions that move you to express.
If you want to speak anonymously, please send me an email.
I understand that cronehood, aging and its necessary adjustments are sensitive subjects...
I am interested in hearing from you.

1.What image does the word ‘crone’ conjure up in your mind?

2.What moved you to join an online crone group? (if you did...)

3.What possibilities do you see for global online crone communities – a concept unheard of until only a few years ago?

4.Describe your personal experience with:
a.the comedy of crone,

b.the tragedy of crone.

What is a crone?

2009-08-20T08:35:00.000-07:00

While talking to an 80-something woman, she asked me directly, "what is your definition of crone?

I said "IMHO... my humble definition... a crone is a woman who has passed the stages of maiden and mother, and has completed the menopausal transition to cronehood. She is womanhood in full power - within her being is a lover, a nurturer, an artist, an activist, a scientist, a teacher and a lifelong student, a high priestess and a creator. ...a goddess."

She smiled.

Opportunity for fulfillment of a crone's life purpose increases - once past the householder years... raising the children, developing career, inner exploration, been there, done that. Cronehood is the time to crystallize experiential wisdom and manifest it into being. Invoke your truth, protect your tribe and vision the blossoming of change.

I'm an urban elder.Its a vantage point that I sometimes, almost... feel guilty to assume.My life is rich with experience and innocence revived...not the innocence of youth,but of a turning away from then to a new, clearer focus on that which is not yet.to that which is becoming when I will not be,to that which is spirit.
Cronehood begins as a leaf leaves the tree
the leaf goes through a brilliant period of color changes
the leaf withers slowly with time and temperature
the leaf becomes a unique crystallized sculpture of multi-patterned cellulose
the leaf is a work of art
the leaf crumples and turns to dust

Cronehood is getting published.
It is when the stories have been written, edited, and proofread... and its time to tell the truth... time to strip away the norms, convention, tradition and pride. Time to be who you really are while you have time.