Assisted Living

Have you ever visited anybody in an assisted living facility?   It's where they put people who can't take care of themselves: they can't dress themselves, go to the toilet without help, remember who their friends are, know when it's time to take their medications.   Some of the people at a facility I visited, I admit, did indeed seem to be enjoying themselves.   When I asked a group of Jingo players what was the differende3 between Jingo and Bingo, one old lady chirped: "the name!" The experiences, however, seem to be quite variable.

During the last two years of her life, my mother had suffered a series of transient ischemic attacks and suffered from dementia as a result.   She knew who we were, but clearly couldn't take care of herself.  When he was in high school my son Thabie gave piano concerts in assisted living facilities.  The residents whimpered for their cookies and kool aid while Thabie was playing.  Nurses tend to talk to them as if they were children.   It's still a place you go to only when all other options have been excluded.

A friend of mine, who is just a year older than me, was put in assisted living by his son who thought his dad should not be living alone.   My friend didn't really need to be in assisted living but there were no independent apartments available in the retirement complex.   We visited him there four or five times and walked around where we saw old people playing bingo or sleeping while watching TV: a thoroughly depressing place.   He said the upper floors were filled with people suffering from decrepitude or dementia.   My friend said he was depressed, especially in the morning when he would wake up with nothing to look forward except sitting in his chair. 

For this guy there was a happy ending as he was able to move into an independent living apartment with a gym with trainers, clubs and speakers, a library, doctors and dentist offices.   The majority of residents were tooling around at good speeds in their walkers.  My friend was much, much happier and we were happy for him.  He drove his walker like a teenager in a sports car.

These visits made me ask myself, how do we spend our final years?   It seemed that the people in assisted living were essentially sitting around waiting to die.   Nobody should be doing that.  Everybody, no matter how decrepit or demented, deserves to be treated with respect and dignity.   Everybody, as far as possible, should be engaged in meaningful social interaction and individual creative activity.  Our final years need to be as important as years in our twenties or thirties, filled with activity we find valuable.

I confess that my own inclination has been to spend too much time reading in my living room chair
My recent trip to Brooklyn (see my post "Browsing Brooklyn")  was one successful effort at moving around more and soon I'll be trying to hike the easy trails in Shenandoah National Park.

Winter in the White Mountains: An Adventure Story

Old guys, like me, when we look back, we recall stuff we've done that seems risky and immature.  With our current maturity and wisdom, we never would have done such a foolish thing.  In today's post, I recall such a scary adventure.

In the 1960's I worked at Putney School in Vermont where I was an English teacher and Head of Trips.   In the latter capacity, I ran the fall and spring camping trips that all the students went on as well as a couple of optional winter climbs in the White Mountains.   This story involves a climb of Mount Adams, the second highest and most challenging winter climb in this mountain range.

With my friend Bob, the biology teacher, and me as leaders, we left school after class on Friday, and went to my cabin in Crawford Notch where we spent the night.   Up at 4 a.m. Saturday morning, we had breakfast and took a short drive to the trailhead where we put on snowshoes for the arduous climb through thigh deep snow to Crag Camp, a cabin at treeline where we spent Saturday night.   After breakfast Sunday we put on crampons (a set of  metal spikes strapped to the bottoms of our boots) to allow us to navigate the ice above timber line. 

Mount Washington is famous for having the world's worst weather and the same if true for Mount Adams.  As we climbed upward the wind grew stronger and stronger.   By the time we made the summit the wind was howling so loudly that we had to yell in one another's ears to be heard.   I later learned that the temperature was 30 below zero and the wind was 100 miles an hour, readings taken by an Appalachian Mountain Club expedition (they had also set out on the same day and had turned back wisely).   The standard formula is 30-30-30  meaning at 30 below with a 30 mile an hour wind, exposed flesh freezes in 30 seconds.

Mt Adams, New Hampshire, Winter

I knew we had to get off the summit quickly and so I chose an alternate route down the east side of the mountain so we could be out of the fury of the howling wind.   I had the habit as leader of regularly looking back to be sure everybody was with me.   The second time I looked back I saw that only four students were behind me with the other three students and Bob nowhere in sight.  We yelled but heard and saw nothing.  I decided we would have a major disaster if we spread one by one to look, so I took my four students down to the col,  the low spot (still above tree line) between Mounts Adams and Jefferson.  I arranged the four in a tight circle with ponchos on the outside to trap the warmth.

With my students relatively protected I started back up the summits alone to look for Bob and the three students by myself.   As I climbed I kept looking back at the circle of four protected by their ponchos.  At one such look back, the students, then no bigger than ants, started gesturing wildly and pointing.   Sure enough, around the bend came Bob and his three students.   I hurried back to find out what had happened!

What I discovered was an incredible feat of heroism on Bob's part.   The crampon on one of his student's boots came off, the strap broken.   Hiking above tree line was impossible without two crampons.   Bob had somehow managed to get string out of his pack and fashion a makeshift crampon strap.  Remembering the 30-30-30 (on this day actually 30-100-10) rule, I have no idea how he managed to do this.

The rest of the descent was uneventful.  The only minor casualty was with 6'4" Garrett who could never find ski pants that were long enough and so had a pair on that did not fully cover his ankles causing him to acquire nasty frostbite.   Because of this, Garrett had to miss our annual ski trip to Stowe, Vermont, but he proudly declared from the school's infirmary, "It was worth it!"

In retrospect, from my current vantage point, I should have turned back.  But it's an open question: which is preferable, my youthful spirit of adventure or my "mature" caution.

Browsing Brooklyn

When I began this blog last February, I pontificated to the effect  that the past was history, beyond our control.   The only events over which we could exert control were the present and the future; therefore, don't fret the past.  I then proceeded, over some eighteen blogs, to ruminate on things long past: my hippy days, my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and my foreign service experiences.

Today: back to the present or very recent past.  I had made up my mind that, due to declining energy levels, travel was something I could no longer manage.   Specifically and painfully I would see my daughter Palesa's apartment in Brooklyn only through emailed pictures. I even thought maybe if I fly it would be easier!  My wife, Qenehelo, son Thabie, and daughter, Palesa, all  argued that all I had to do was sit in the front passenger seat of the car, tilt the seat back and take a nap.  Finally I was persuaded, and by George we made it!   And in good shape.

Not only that, I actually tooled around Brooklyn on my two feet.   We went to beautiful Prospect Park, across the street from Palesa and Jeff's apartment where we walked to the edge of a lake. 

Qenehelo and I in Prospect Park

                                                                                                    

Palesa and me in her apartment

                                                    

The next day we went to Coney Island, where the rides were shut, the effects of Hurricane Sandy were still evident but the board walk had lots of traffic.   I could hardly believe I was doing this stuff.

Thabie at Coney Island

                                                          
Then we went to the Botanical Gardens, my personal favorite place where, we borrowed a wheel chair and I tooled around, the energy supplied by Palesa.

Here I am tooling around the Botanical Gardens!

The next day we were off to the Brooklyn Museum, again on my own two feet, African art, ancient Egyptian stone carvings, Rembrandts, contemporary American art.   I had had a stereotypical notion of Brooklyn as a place of run down apartments and not much else.   Wrong!  Botanical gardens, parks, museums, and more.   Not the borough I had conceived of. On the next day we walked four or five blocks to an outdoor concert of African music near Metro Tech Center Commons where people were dancing and I struck up an acquaintance with Daryl from Harlem.

Music at the MetroTech Commons in Downtown Brooklyn

    
                                                                       

Here I am with Daryl

I realize that all this sounds like the tedious scribblings on travel post cards.   But the main point was that I was actually doing it.   A week earlier I would have said that all this was the stuff of dreams, nothing I could actually do.  The lesson for me was that I could do a lot more than I thought I could, thanks to the encouragement of Qenehelo, Thabie, and Palesa.  I  feel so much better for having gotten out of my chair, gone to Brooklyn and acted like any tourist!

Octogenerians Rejoice

Friday's Washington Post (May 24) included the usual sadly depressing litany of people killing one another:  the page 8 world news digest included " 5-day death toll at 16 after frightful night" (Lebanon);  Rickshaw bomb killed 13 in Baluchistan"; "7 Iraqi soldiers shot dead at checkpoint." 

Then at the end a short note on an astonishing event: "Japanese man, 80, becomes oldest to scale Everest."   The paragraph notes that "an 80-year old Japanese man who began the year with his fourth heart operation became the oldest conqueror of Mount Everest. . . even with an 81 year-old Nepalese climber not far behind him."

This is the mountain that for the first half of the twentieth century the world's greatest climbers, in the prime of their lives failed to conquer, until Edmond Hillary and Tensing achieved the feat in 1953.   And they were young and in top shape.  Many octogenarians, myself included, consider it a challenging climb to walk upstairs in our houses and here are two men in their 80's, one of whom had recently had his fourth heart operation, on top of Everest!   It's almost impossible  to believe.

Mountain climbing has long been one of my favourite activities.  I've hiked the Green Mountains in Vermont, the White Mountains in New Hampshire (including several winter ascents of Mounts Washington, Adams and Lafayette, with some of the world's worst weather), The Rocky Mountains, the French Alps, and even  the Himalayan foothills.   But never have I aspired to try the great Himalayan Peaks. 

So I have no envy of Yuichiro Miura.  I have only incredulous awe of his feat and vast admiration.  At a time when I'm dealing with reduced physical capacities, he's climbing Everest after his fourth heart operation.  What a guy.  I'd love to shake his hand some day. 

Young and Reckless in Nambia

You might think that after sampling a week behind bars in a Mexican jail, I wouldn't go near any more jails. Wrong!   (See my post of March 5).   During a school break when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Lesotho, a fellow teacher, Richard, and I decided to visit Namibia, which was then called Southwest Africa and controlled by apartheid South Africa.   How does one get from Lesotho to Southwest Africa without a car?  Hitchhiking, naturally.

Using this method we crossed the subcontinent and arrived in Southwest Africa, well south of Windhoek, the capital.   Our destination was Etosha Nationals Park in the extreme north, bordering on Angola.   Where would we, on volunteer budgets, stay during the nights?  Richard had read somewhere that if you went to the local jail and they had a free cell, you could bunk down there.   One problem solved.  We spent several nights in unlocked cells, not the Ritz, but a roof over our heads. .The other problem was that there was a war going on between the South African army and the freedom fighters of SWAPO (Southwest Africa Peoples Organization).  Well, we'd just have to be careful.  The jail idea having actually worked well, in due time we arrived in Windhoek.

In Windhoek we learned that all speed limits were off to the north to give motorists the chance to evade the war.  We rented a car in the capital and started off.   We encountered South African army patrols going through the woods and figured that all would be well once we got to Etosha.  So we had a pleasant few days watching the big game, confident we didn't need to worry about civil war.   There were no other visitors. Only later did we learn that SWAPO was using Etosha as its headquarters.

We made it back south where Richard and I parted, he going to Cape Town and I going back to Maseru, Lesotho.  When I arrived in Bloemfontein, the bastion of apartheid, it was evening and I had in my pocket enough money only for dinner or a hotel.  I opted to eat and afterwards made my way to local jail, where I was asked to wait for half an hour.  

Eventually someone showed up and said "I'll show you to your quarters."   I thought that sounded promising until I was put in a cell and the door was looked.   They had never locked the doors in Namibia.  "Wait!   I'm not a criminal!"  "It's for your own safety.  You'll be released in the morning."  Around 11 p.m.  the door was unlocked and a wildly drunk man, yelling and thrashing about, was pushed into the cell with me.   I immediately set about trying to calm him down with minimal success.  I may have slept an hour or two.

Sure enough, the guard opened the door at 6:30 a.m., where there was woman from the Salvation Army, handing out religious tracts.   "God bless you, my son," she said to me.

Later, when I was a Foreign Service officer in Lesotho, I told this story to the king who roared with laughter at my naiveté in thinking I could mosey into a jail in Bloemfontein without consequence.

Around the World in Thirty Days

I realize there are climate-change deniers, evolution deniers,and  birthers, but I doubt there are too many flat-earthers.   Undaunted I decided to check out the theory by circumnavigating the globe in thirty days.   As you will see this was a very bad idea.

It happened on my second annual visit to South Asia, as Country Affairs Officer.  I flew first to Pakistan, where I went to four cities where the US Information Agency had posts: Islamabad, Peshawar, Lahore, and Karachi.  I learned at a Peshawar diplomatic reception that cabinet ministers, when asked by the bartender what they would like to drink, would reply "oh, something refreshing," meaning something alcoholic.   In Lahore, at a minister's house, the host got out scotch, vodka, gin and the like.  All this in an officially teetotaling country.

I next went to Katmandu in Nepal, where, contrary to what you would expect, the city was shrouded with smog (thanks to the profession of motorized and poorly maintained rickshaws spewing exhaust) and most people went around nursing respiratory infections.  The Public Affairs Officer took me on a long drive into the countryside so that I could actually see the Himalayas.   Then on to Dhaka, where business men walked around the city in boots because of the mud and flooding.

Here's where it got interesting.  I theorized that if I was in Dhaka, it made no difference whether I went east or west on my way home. ,   Why not go east, visit Hawaii for a couple of days and then on home?  To justify my visit to Hawaii, I arranged for consultations at the East-West Institute, a cooperative academic venture.

My first stop was Bangkok, where I visited a friend who was Public Affairs Officer.  I had dinner at his house and asked to go to the airport hotel where I had a room.  My friend said there was no point in going until later at night because the traffic gridlock was overwhelming.   So we walked around visiting functioning crematoriums and I didn't get to me room until midnight.

Boarding for my plane was 2 p.m. giving me a mere two hours sleep before setting off on my foolhardy adventure.  We flew several hours to Narita Airport, outside Tokyo, where I had a seven hour layover.    The plastic seats were scientifically designed to prevent rest and the international boarding area was devoid of distractions.

Finally, still with only two hours' sleep,  I took off for Hawaii.   On the way, we crossed the international date line, putting the finishing touches on my disorientation and exhaustion.   Was it Tuesday or Wednesday, morning or evening?   I had no idea.   When we arrived in Honolulu,  I checked into my hotel headed for the bed, but no.   Mt hosts informed me that they had scheduled wall-to-wall appointments at the East-West Institute.   So I sat through scholarly discussions of oil pipelines through South Asia and similarly soporific topics.

I actually wandered off to Waikiki Beach where I utterly failed to appreciate its beauty.  Ultimately I was off to Detroit and finally back to Washington, arriving in total exhaustion.  The smart thing to do would have been to accept that the earth is spherical.   There's no need, believe me, actually to check it out.

How to Stop Some Wars

As you look around the world, do you notice how many conflicts are based on religious or ethnic differences?  In Iraq, especially, and throughout the Middle East, we see the Sunni and Shia factions of Islam killing each other.  There are the Hindus and Muslims fueling the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir, the Israelis and the Palestinians so wary of each other that they seem unwilling to negotiate.  We have the Hutus and Tutsis in central Africa, the Africans, Indians, and whites in South Africa.

And so it goes.   We tend to lump people together into groups and say, in effect, I don't need to know those people individually and personally because I know what people in that group are like.  But that's just what we do need to know.

My focus today is the little known, small island of Cyprus, in the news recently because of its precarious finances.  Reading the stories you'd think the Greek-oriented government was the government of all Cyprus.  In fact  since 1974, Cyprus has been a divided island with the Greek-Cypriots controlling the southern two thirds and the northern portion controlled by the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, protected by 30,000 Turkish troops.  There is a border between the two which is difficult to cross.

When I retired from the Foreign Service I had the good luck to get a job with AMIDEAST, a non-profit promoting educational exchanges.  I was assigned to the Cyprus-America Scholarship Program.   We monitored academic progress and visited several students twice annually.   But an important aspect of our program was promoting understanding between the two sides.   When I started on the program we had Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots on the same campus who didn't bother to talk to each other.

As a result we organized week-long conflict resolution workshops held at Coolfont resort in West Virginia.   The students lived in cabins in the woods and spent their time in a series of role-playing exercises run by the Conflict Management Group of Cambridge, Mass.   One game I recall: groups of Turkish Cypriots were asked the imagine they were Greek Cypriots, and a group of Greek Cypriots
were told to pretend they were Greek Cypriots.  Then the "Greek Cypriots"(actually Turkish Cypriots)  were asked to say what they thought of Turkish Cypriots and the reverse.  It was a way of seeing the others' point of view.

After classes the students socialized as one homogenous group, taking meals and playing sports and outdoor games together.   They formed a circle with a blindfolded student in the center.   He leaned back untl he started to fall, but was caught by other students.   He had trusted them.  then there were the high ropes with trip wires.   Below are two pictures of the students talking and listening to each other.

After a week together, the students were hugging each other and singing together.  The camaraderie continued back on the campuses where if a student got sick, he/she was sure to be visited by both Greek- and Turkish- Cypriot friends.  What the students had learned was that whatever cultural, ethnic or religious differences exist between people, their common humanity draws them together.  Before all, we are just people, wanting to make something of our lives, needing to be loved.