The Season for Celebration and wonder?

Thanksgiving was just as predicted. No need to send out that photo of the nicely browned turkey and the large salmon fillet, all the side dishes familiar and strange, and all of us, more than twenty sitting down to the mismatched dinnerware with arms around our young ones. Just imagine the love and boisterousness permeating our farm house. An American Thanksgiving, and the best.

Today we have been trying to figure out what health plan we should adopt to supplement Medicare. We have been to informational meetings, read the stuff from the various insurance companies. For every plan there is a 'gotcha' so there is no clear best one. Our retirement health plan from my husband's old work place was canceled due to the economic situation. We have pretty much decided to go with traditional Medicare and add a prescription drug plan to it. This should be simple..

Even if one selected a more pricey drug plan, it is still incredibly inexpensive compared to the health plans those folks under 65 need to have. There is a deduction from my social security benefit of about $300 a month. (Less for lower income folks.) Then, on top of that I would pay about $40 per month for Part D which is the prescription drug benefit. So, I will be paying under $350 a month for health insurance. And, like everyone else, I'll pay the modest co-pays when ever I visit a doctor or order a prescription drug.

Of course, I wonder about all those people who have no clue about what to do, or have no money at all? The government option that all seniors have- it's called Medicare- automatically deducts the standard Medicare premium based on income. I have been impressed with the user friendliness of the Medicare website and the folks in the social security offices.

What appalls me is the level of difficulty for young people and their children to wend their way through the system of private insurance. The premiums are so expensive! So many of our citizens haven't a clue about what to do. They have no money and are powerless. When the baby is desperately sick they go the nearest emergency room. They don't have the $20 in their pocket even for a co-pay.

What are we thinking? What a sad and miserable country this is that does not treasure our children and young people. I despair of having any health care reform bill pass. It is being nibbled to death by ducks (the old white guys in suits who pander to their election in the next campaign).

In my dreams I envision a culture in America where children and families are valued. They have access to first quality health care, their teeth are cared for, they eat nutritious and whole foods in their schools. In my dreams I see legislators thinking altruistically and pragmatically about these issues and not pandering to special interests (the pharmaceutical industry,big business of any stripe, the right and left wing nuts etc.)

All is not to despair. I live in a community that has many caring people who think about these issues and put in their time and thought and energy to change the status quo. They work by challenging the local politicians, making their voices heard. They work for change, and sometimes it can happen.

Thankful

These orchids, given to me by my best friend are in profuse bloom these last days of autumn. Every day I look at them and I am thankful for the friendship they signify and for the beauty of them in my life.

Since I was of the age to be at all sensible I have always loved Thanksgiving above all holidays. Even now, no one has figured out how to make this holiday extremely commercial. After all this time, Thanksgiving is still about family and giving. I read about how dysfunctional families snipe at each other, hunker down and watch football, remark on who eats or doesn't eat. Here, no one ever turns on the t.v. at Thanksgiving, and we are all foodies. After dinner we all go out and look at alligators and frogs.

I have hardly ever had a bad time at Thanksgiving. There was one I remember when my sister was born and my dad cooked a duck that was slightly raw! And then there was the Thanksgiving when we lived in Paris, specially ordered a turkey and when we picked it up it had feathers, legs, feet and a beak! Our kitchen was a tiny place and I remember how we addressed this situation, like surgeons, so serious! The turkey was good as I remember. Then there was the Thanksgiving here at the ranch when our soon-to-be ex daughter in law made it so uncomfortable that we all fanned out over the pastures and wept.

But mostly, Thanksgivings in our family are wonderful and affirming. For so many years we did not have any kin to come so we made a feast with friends. Now, we have a number of family members who live in the vicinity: a sister and her husband, a daughter and her son, a nephew and his wife. And the old friends who have really been our family all these years. And new friends.

We will all gather here for the day. Some will spend the night. Many will bring dishes to share and the kitchen will be hopping! We'll move the dining table from the kitchen to the hall and install a couple of extra tables, find the high chairs for the twins, gather chairs from all over the house, spread out mismatched tablecloths and table settings. It won't look like a state dinner at the White House, but it will be fine! The turkey and the salmon will be presented. Everyone will love the gravy and the mashed potatoes and the many other dishes, many from the garden. They'll love the pies and cake. The kids will jump around and behave like all kids do.

Most of all, we'll be thankful to be here in all skin hues together in this ragged country with a pragmatic president who is basically a good person. I give thanks for all of this.

On being a Senior Citrizen, Some Thoughts..

It has been spectacular weather these last few days- what we come to Florida for. The nights are so cool we put on extra covers and welcome the dog who runs hot at our feet in bed. The early mornings are foggy and the blackbirds scream and chuckle as they pass by. The cool weather vegetables such as peas and lettuces are thriving. The garden is still full of butterflies.

We have our wonderful routine of breakfast and then reading the papers. Then I have many plans for the day: weeding the gardens, clipping, fertilizing, and then working in my studio on whatever quilt or painting or photographs or writing project I have going. Some days I have my volunteer work in our local school and I love this! My new knowledge of Spanish has helped me enormously. I am energized to be of help. There is never enough time to do all I want to do.

Yet, to be a senior citizen, someone who has been a long time worker (for a wage!), has its complexities. There are many aspects of being retired that we all love. You surely cannot miss those staff meetings or those stomach turning events when you have to fire someone or you know you have screwed up or you have to do way too much in a day, and we wonder what we'll do.

So, here we are, retired, full of experience and some wisdom and on Medicare and Social Security. What will we do? For the first couple of years we flop around, thankful not to be on a work and commute schedule, and we cast around for what will make us feel purposeful. We try various volunteer activities and some of them stick. You cannot make a life out of baby sitting the grand kids.

I think women have a better grip on this period of life. Because we are in this generation we have known what it is to have been in the first cohort of women who worked and also had to do the work of being the wife and mother (as our mothers did). And so we have a great deficit of time for ourselves. While we were raising the kids and going to work we dreamed of having time for ourselves. And now we do - and we are going for it!

Our husbands who made the lion's share of the household economy, and worked so hard for their families got left out of even thinking about what else beyond the work they were doing they could do in the future. Shuffleboard isn't enough.

I know so many women my age whose husbands are now so bereft in retirement. I see these men following along behind their wives in the grocery store. Women tell me that their husbands don't do anything, just sit there and read magazines or watch t.v. or play golf. Are they waiting to be invited to the great platter of life?

I think that the next generation prior to the baby boomers will be better prepared for the long and glorious generative years than we are. They will have the experience of being unemployed, scratching for their roles in the family. I only hope they will have the wonderful benefits we do (Thanks to the government !).

Almost Thanksgiving

When I go out to visit the vegetable garden I am stunned by the number and variety of butterflies still flitting around. Last spring I planted a small space for zinnias (I love these bright easy tacky flowers and so do the butterflies). In the heat of summer all those zinnias died back but hundreds of volunteers sprang up from the spent seed heads this fall. Of course I could not bear to turn them under so they are in profusion with the milkweed and red sage among the collards and broccoli and collards. I beat them back from the carrots and peas. The lettuce is doing well, some of it has bolted in the heat but each day I plant more seeds. I think we are set for salad through the winter, if it doesn't freeze hard.

What I love about gardening is that it is never the same from year to year. You never know about the weather! The only things I plant regularly are tomatoes in spring, collards, beans, onions, carrots and broccoli, and of course, many types of lettuces. Last garden we had beets. This fall we have kohlrabi and broccoli raab and, hopefully, peas. I love potatoes - such an adventure to dig them out, feeling through the soil to find those tender and tasty globes. I plant these in February.

In some gardening rotations I vow to have a really neat garden- no weeds in the paths, all the beds well mulched with compost - and NO zinnias! But in this fall garden the place is ample with flowers along side the vegetables, even morning glory volunteers triumphantly climbing the fence.

Quincy, my grandson, is here for a weekend. Maybe I can get him interested in weeding. Whatever we do, it will be outside in this glorious weather. Perhaps we'll take some of the water weeds out of the fish pond. We'll collect pine cones and look at frogs, ride our bikes down the road. And we'll go out adventuring after dark to look for alligators and spiders. He loves to wear his head lamp, so bold, but I feel his warm hand in mine and I think about that delicious time after his bath when we cuddle down to read a story. I tell him that tomorrow's another day, Grandpa's going to make pancakes and will need help squeezing the oranges for our juice. He'll appear early all dressed and ready for the day.

So many hard things are happening right now about being... Living on a farm and having a five year old you love beyond the beyond come to visit puts me in the here and now, and it isn't bad.

New Boy!

Here is Seattle Brooks Bazely, a few minutes old, my newest family member, my great nephew. He's an Australian citizen, how amazing! He's a poster boy for government health care. Look at those beady watchful eyes. He's thinking about what the USA, his other country, will decide about the many challenges it faces.

His mother, Shady, spent a year living with us when she was eleven. Lots about that year were hard for us all but we put down the basics for a lifetime of caring for each other. I remember that when she went home to visit her Western family, I wept as I put her on the plane. She had become such a part of our lives I could barely part with her even for ten days. When I brushed her hair, I marveled at the roundness of the back of her head, so different from my own children's. I cooked dinner to the sounds of her practicing piano.

She ultimately married an Australian, a lovely man, and she became a professor of English in a university in Australia. She's written a book, become a fine musician and made Australia her home. From time to time she visits the United States and her western family in Seattle. She's also come here to Florida with her husband. We have visited them in Australia and they certainly showed us a grand time.

Two years ago for Thanksgiving we met Shady and Scotty in Wellington, New Zealand, where we were visiting New Zealand friends. How fun that was shopping for a traditional U.S. Thanksgiving in the Wellington markets. Some stuff was hard to find (Cranberry sauce?!) Many of us gathered in a strange ultra modern time-share overlooking the harbor. We had traveled to New Zealand with my brother and his wife, making our way from the north island all the way to the end of the south island. Wellington in the middle, and Thanksgiving for the expats was a treat. I was so excited to see our old friends from the U.S. and the big bonus of seeing Shady and Scotty.

We keep in touch, mostly by e-mail. And now Shady and Scotty have baby Seattle they are in love with! Shady was in the hospital for three nights and four days. They keep all new mothers this long. The labor was long and hard, but no knock out drugs, no Cesarean. In Australia and New Zealand and in most European countries, they keep new mothers in hospital until the milk comes in and the new moms get the support of lactation specialists. (Here in the USA you are lucky to be in the hospital after a normal birth for about twelve hours. Insurance.)

When I spoke with Shady today, five days after Seattle's birth, her midwife was just coming to check on the breastfeeding and the well being of baby Seattle. In the background I could hear those dear little chirps and sucking sounds. Shady will be on maternity leave for a YEAR! Scotty will have three months of paternity leave from his job.

Our young friends in New Zealand who have two small children are equally blessed by their health care system. One of their boys seemed to have some language delay. On their national health service, no problem, a speech therapist came to their house for several years. There was lots of support, and now this little boy is just fine, speaks as well as any young New Zealand citizen.

I can't help thinking that we in the United States are so sorely lacking in the care of our children. What is the matter with us that we do not take care of our kids?? Some on the extreme right holler about abortions, but I wonder what they are thinking about the kids that are actually here? We put children at the bottom of all priorities. How sad. How venal we are!

Today I went to speak to a group of forty Hispanic parents in our local school about nutrition. These low paid and unemployed folks care just as much as anyone about their kids, but they get no help. (I am imagining a scenario where a speech therapist shows up at one of the public housing units.) Couldn't happen here. This is the US of America where we love our scoundrels in the insurance and finance realms. And we do not really care about our children (our legacy!).

Sometimes, I believe that people are acting and reacting because of a t.v. mentality: everything's fake and plastic and so many can't think or question on their own and so take their opinions from talk shows that confirm their fears. Internet screeds feed their prejudices.

Meanwhile, I'm out to save the world, at least my little corner of it, by volunteering, giving and engaging. And, mostly, I try to remain humble and open to new ideas.

Seattle, welcome to a most difficult world. Your parents are so brave and optimistic! Perhaps you can make a difference. I am counting on you!

(0 unread) Yahoo! Mail, ranchmolly

(0 unread) Yahoo! Mail, ranchmolly

Health Care

We are down to the wire on health care reform. It has been a dizzying time. There have been so many issues, most of them so hard to understand! Most of us look at this issue through our personal prisms. If you are young and 'invincible' and only watch Fox News or listen to the hard right radio shows, your knee jerk reaction is that all this smacks of the dreaded word, which you actually never looked up: "socialism", let alone thought about.

Or maybe you are young and invincible and have no health insurance, and still don't think hard about any issues not pertaining to you so you just think "Whatever.. Doesn't apply to me." You need to get on board.

In a Kristoff column in the paper today I noted some statistics. The United States is lagging far behind every developed country in every area of health. We are so behind many other countries in the benchmarks of infant mortality, healthy births, etc. We lag in these milestones until (UNTIL!) we look at our elderly population - the folks over 65, and then the United States comes out on top. Could this be because of Medicare, the government program that ensures that every single person over the age of 65 has access to decent health care??

This week I have had some health issues, nothing major, and I will tell you that I have had personal experience of splendid care on the Medicare dime. I go to a local clinic to a family practice group and I have rarely ever seen a child there. I believe this is because the families in this area do not have insurance. In emergencies they go to the ER at the local hospital.

But we oldsters confidently step up to our local doctors and clinics, pay a nominal co-pay, and in many instances pay nothing. And so we avert health disasters, and if they strike, we can deal thanks to Medicare.

Why are we talking about sending Granny off on an ice floe?? Granny is just fine on Medicare (and she knows that Hospice is always there just in case). What we really need to think about are the kids who rarely get to their checkups, never see a dentist. Their parents need to have checkups as well, need to have dentistry, need to have the option of taking their kids to a family doctor (such as I have!) who knows them and is following their health history. What we need is Medicare for everyone.

The so called government option is great! Just ask anyone sixty-five or over. That's all I'm saying.

Flubber! At Lacoochee on kids' time.

These kids are enjoying an afternoon last week of making and playing with Flubber. We made it from Borax and white glue and food color. This polymer has so many amazing properties that intrigue kids. They are playing with this amazing stuff, figuring out how it operates. We talked a bit about what's in the ingredients and why it might behave the way it does and I asked them to experiment at home with it, i.e. freeze it, put it in the microwave, let it sit, etc.

This week when I appeared some of the kids wanted to tell me about their experiment I had encouraged them to do at home. The flubber they froze became hard and when thawed was as usual. The Flubber they cooked in the microwave bubbled and never recovered its original property.

There is never enough time. I have an hour and a half to address these interesting observations. We could spend an entire week, all hours on this, and the kids would have an insight about the science of life! But, no, their remarkable teacher, Rachel, must hue to the exigencies of 'What one must do as a teacher in these days'.

In today's educational system, there is no paying attention to the 'teachable moment'. This is when a kid comes into class with a praying mantis he/she has captured. In the teachable moment the teacher puts aside the lesson plan for the moment and directs the kids to look carefully at this interesting insect. There are all sorts of ideas that can be pursued. Science? Ecology? General knowledge? So many ways to go! And where kids go shouldn't be always constricted by the schedule.

Each week I do a cooking project with these nine and ten year- olds. They love the chopping and the mixing and everything hands-on. And they especially like eating what they have made. It is worth it to shlep in all the pans and pots and ingredients. There are two volunteer parents who usually show up to help and I adore them!

Aside from this very satisfactory volunteer activity, and others, I am loving this wonderful Florida autumn when you don't die if you work outside. I spend an hour at least in the vegetable garden, a third of which is now given over to the butterflies who flit in the milkweed, red sage and zinnias. We eat every evening from a choice of broccoli, rappini, beans, collards, eggplants and lettuces.

When we visited Colombia I vowed to make in this year a renewed effort to really learn conversational Spanish. On line I found a program (Pimsleur) that would seem to fit. I ordered it for $9.00. And what a deal! I look forward to each day when I can do another unit. Now I am on lesson 7. There are only eight! Today at school I was able to actually speak to the volunteer women who help me in the cooking.

This program just sucks you in, it's so compelling. In a stellar program of marketing, they sent me the next twenty lessons just as I am about to finish the $9 program. They give you 30 days to review it, no money. Hey! I can do these next lessons, a day at a time, send it back for free. I would pay the $275 they want for this. It's worth it. But, if I continue tomorrow, and on, and I will, I'll have fluency in Spanish before my thirty days are up. (But, maybe they are on to me and will send the next bunch of CD's with a sheriff!)

Always interesting to be in my skin.

Grandsons visiting!

Here is a drawing my sixteen year old grandson made in the day and a half he visited us on his long weekend to look at Florida colleges. Diego arrived very late on Friday (we were asleep). He appeared in the morning, many hugs and kisses. We were so glad to see him after three months since the last sighting of him in Puerto Rico. After a decent interval of our questions and his answers about how he was and what he might expect from these few days of looking at colleges here that he might apply to, he drifted off to my studio where he feels comfortable. I knew that my art space would be his for the duration.

He's been here many times, and always spends the most time here where there are so many art materials - papers, inks, paints, cloth, and everything anyone could want. His productions are stellar. This time, he only really had a day to work.

He sits there at the big central table thinking for awhile. Then he starts to assemble his tools and materials. He knows where everything is. All the while I am working on my current quilt project. It is companionable- the elderly grandma and the young one. The large art table spills over with crayons, inks, scissors. Sometimes we talk and sometimes a friendly silence falls when you could hear only the whir of the sewing machine or the scratching of crayons on an interesting surface. We often listen to classical music.

Out of the corner of my eye I am watching how my grandson explores the media he has chosen, always thinking, always thinking, trying out various techniques. Sometimes we talk about what we are doing. Sometimes I direct him to some new art supply I have. Occasionally I ask him about his life and school. We discuss theater techniques and books and plays we have read, his family, his friends, details of life. He's sixteen, he never asks me anything about our lives, but he's so observant about all the tiny changes here since he last visited I can forgive his incuriousness about us. He knows we will always be there. (Hey, you've got wrinkles, are you about to die of something?) Kids cannot think about this, I know.

I think that this wonderful connection Diego and I have is not built on grandma/grandson stuff, not on 'Are your grades good?' but on the fact that we really really like each other and have a commonality of interests. We are comfortable together and I would never dream of asking him anything that would make him cringe. And I learn a lot. (I could be stranded on an island with him, my bottom line.)

After one pure day of Diego with us, his aunt and five year old cousin Quincy, arrived. Diego is stellar with small kids (he has a much younger little brother he adores). Quincy loves Diego and the two of them spent some very hot moments with Quincy riding his bike a quarter mile up the road to show off his 'stick garden' to Diego. (Quincy has artfully placed sticks in a mound of rocks we use to fill in holes in the driveway)

It was certainly a very special day for me to have these two kids- my oldest and youngest grandsons- enjoying each other and loving being here in this perfect place together.

I dare not think, I dare not hope, that Diego will choose to go to college here in Florida. So smart and accomplished, he could go anywhere. But it is his decision, he knows what he needs and I respect his decision, whatever it is. We would all love it so much if he would be part of the Florida family.

Being a grandparent is the best! Two of my grandchildren, Joe and Caroline, live so far away we rarely get to see them. I must be content with frequent photos and phone calls, and knowing that the other grandparents who are closer are keeping watch and celebrating them on each milestone. Perhaps, one day Joe and Caroline will be in our neighborhood. I hope!

Our east coast grandsons are known to us; they visit often enough to keep the family vision fresh and we have so many tracks of them on this property. Perhaps one of them, or their western cousins, will be interested enough in this magnificent place to make a claim. We'll see.

My daughter and I spent some time in the so-called vegetable garden this afternoon. There must have been twenty kinds of butterflies. We smiled!