Hippy New Year

I’m sitting in the small community of River Meadows, between Sunriver and La Pine, Oregon, on the last evening of 2012. It’s been a hell of a year. Lots of good stuff, to be sure, but I have experienced more death this year than in any other year in my memory. I may look back on this year as The Year of Dying. I lost people very close to me and there were the very public deaths in the News. Wow. I could embark, here, upon a real downer of a story to post. Part of the situation, I’m sure, is my age. I’m currently sixty-two. People start dying right where I’m at. So, it goes with the territory. But still, I’m kind of a rookie at the personal part of it. The public part of it, mass shootings, stabbings, rapes, species destruction, genetic modification extinctions, all that stuff that drives us all nuts, well, it’s pervasive and has put an ironclad protective shield of dangerous cynicism around my normally airy sense of irony. It’s the Way of the World. It’s Nature. It’s Darwin at Work. It’s not about guns, it’s not about knives, it’s not about video games. It’s about people. If you want to stop the bleeding, heal the culture. Heal the people who are so marginalized and disconnected that they pick up a weapon and scream “Look At Me!”

But life is about choices. For this evening, I choose to leave that stuff under the rug. At least, for now and for the rest of this piece. Okay, so it’s a short piece. Bless all you readers. Bless your families and your loved ones. Bless us all. May the coming year be better than you hope and more than you dream. We all deserve it.

Birthday Babe

It was my mom’s birthday yesterday. She would have been 92 years old. Born in 1920, she witnessed a lot of change, a stunning amount when you think of it. Probably one of the greatest examples she gave me was that she embraced most of it. She watched the advances in aviation through the eyes of my dad, whose long career was all about flying. Advances in medicine became commonplace. She was behind the curve a bit on the social and generational changes, but I think that is just human nature. I’m using myself as an example here. I’ve reached a point where I do not follow popular culture and have no idea what the latest trends are in that made-up social realm. When I see some young hot actor or actress on TV, I have no idea who they are or what has made them hot. Here’s the shocker: I’m just not interested.

My mother decided, early on, that computers were pretty cool. She got her iPad and became pretty proficient with it in her late 80s. She loved playing word games and Solitare. She also enjoyed email, but grew disgusted with the spam. Haven’t we all?

So happy birthday, Mom. Quantum Physics being what it is, I’m sure you’re still here somewhere and I hope you’re having fun.

Healthy Chubdogs. Yay!

I just read an Associated Press story telling me that 51 percent of overweight people are basically healthy. “Healthy,” in this case, means that half of us fat people have “normal” levels of cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood-fat content (triglycerides). I fall into this category. My last round of blood work was textbook normal and my resting blood pressure is 118/74. My resting heart rate is 62. Does this mean that I won’t fall over this afternoon writhing in agony with crushing chest pain? No, not really. But it isn’t necessarily indicated by my “numbers.” To obfuscate things, I can say it’s contra-indicated. Boy, I do enjoy sounding smart.

Okay. I’m tired of using quote marks. I am curious as to why this fat-can-be-healthy is such a surprise. Of course chubby humans can be healthy. Duh. But we’re bombarded every hour of every day with images of what we’re supposed to look like. We’re inundated with the general pity and/or distain of the less-than-25-percent-body-fat population because we are proportionally-challenged. Like, wow, we’re gross or something.

Some of that is understandable and I suffer from it myself. Last Sunday in the San Diego airport I saw a woman about my age dressed in a short nightgown bend over to attend her luggage. She was wearing a thong, I think. I couldn’t really tell because there were wrinkly rolls of stuff obscuring most of it. It was a remarkable display. So yes, I understand why a large part of our culture considers us ugly and that they equate an overabundance of subcutaneous non-muscle with health problems and a selfish inability to control destructive behavior. We are branded as lazy and undisciplined.

This is probably tied into our unconscious recognition of proportional patterns. There have been studies in every generation attempting to understand what humans find attractive and why we respond the way we do to the visual cues we receive. It’s all knotted up in the Gordian Wad of The Urge to Merge. We have standards. Our bodies want to procreate with other bodies that offer images of strength, swiftness, and beauty. Hello Mr. Darwin. Natural Selection is a powerful force.

Personally, I am embarking (again) on a quest to reduce my shadow. My motivation is almost purely superficial because I really am healthy. I am going to change my lifestyle some for reasons that include (of course) ego and pride, but I’m also trying to pay attention to reducing my carbon footprint, and have a strong desire to follow some of the advice offered in Michael Pollan’s books, most notably: “Eat Food. Not a lot. Mostly Plants.” I just think that make a whole ton of sense. Oh, and did I mention that I'm tired of being lazy and undisciplined?

Because I am compulsively expressive, I will let you know how it’s going. I am hopeful that a chuckle or two will ensue.