Ever wonder what's behind the lyrics of that song you heard on the radio - or what, exactly the lyrics really were? Wonder what that reference was in a speech? Heard about genius.com, a website that annotates music lyrics* and other things on Studio360 this AM & thought you might be interested.
I particularly like this song, that, of course, they bleeped out on the broadcast (so be careful, it's NSFW - not safe for work). And is it me, or has his girl friend left him for woman?
And now that you know the lyrics, here's a more traditional music video that's still fun
*Looked up Obama's 2nd inaugural, though, and unfortunately no one's annotated that wonderful moment when he ties gay rights into the nation's struggle for equal rights for women & for blacks in the line: "We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths—that all of us are created equal—is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall." As far as I can remember that's the only time (at least so far) that a president has mentioned Stonewall in any kind of a speech.
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
More words to the wise
Some more goodies from HRH Purple Queen on Ravelry. I hope you like them.
Heading up to the 30sF today - so a little melting should happen. Fortunately, at least so far, the piles along the sidewalk are still ice-free, thanks to Andy's efforts the other day. Fingers crossed with the cold temps starting again tomorrow, that that stays the case.
Heading up to the 30sF today - so a little melting should happen. Fortunately, at least so far, the piles along the sidewalk are still ice-free, thanks to Andy's efforts the other day. Fingers crossed with the cold temps starting again tomorrow, that that stays the case.
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Old masters & laughter
Here are some images from my Ravelry friend, HRH Purple Queen (remember you can click on the images & get bigger versions). My favorite one is the last one.
And a link to a NY Times article on folks in their 80s who are "at the top of their game." I quoted it a couple of posts ago, but thought you'd enjoy the whole article & the pictures. I tried getting the thing to print but it came out all wonky.
And a link to a NY Times article on folks in their 80s who are "at the top of their game." I quoted it a couple of posts ago, but thought you'd enjoy the whole article & the pictures. I tried getting the thing to print but it came out all wonky.
Sunday, February 15, 2015
The weather outside is frightful
A few pix & a video of the latest blizzard - the 2nd in 3 weeks (I though when they called the first one "the blizzard of 2015" that they were being a bit optimistic).
And a link to a recent interview with the wonderful poet, Mary Oliver (whose poems I've used a couple times as a Christmas card insert, if memory serves). The afore-linked webpage includes recordings of several of her works). Who knew she lived around here for several years? I hope you'll have time to listen to it, or to read the transcript.
I'll requote one here:
"Wild Geese":
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place / in the family of things."
And a link to a recent interview with the wonderful poet, Mary Oliver (whose poems I've used a couple times as a Christmas card insert, if memory serves). The afore-linked webpage includes recordings of several of her works). Who knew she lived around here for several years? I hope you'll have time to listen to it, or to read the transcript.
I'll requote one here:
"Wild Geese":
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place / in the family of things."
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Liberation
A couple Valentine's Day photos to make your day (I hope), and a great essay to calm your mind (ditto).
The Liberation of Growing Old
By ANNE KARPF JAN. 3, 2015
LONDON — WHY do we have such punitive attitudes toward old people? Granted, the ancients did hideous things to elders who were unable to work but still needed food and care, but in more recent times, that had changed: In 18th-century New England, it was common for people to make themselves seem older by adding years to their real age, rather than subtracting them.
Once upon a time, “senile” just meant old, without being pejorative. Even “geriatric” was originally a value-free term, rather than part of the lexicon of contempt toward old people.
Yet today, the language used to describe the changing age composition of the population is little short of apocalyptic. We’re told that the “graying of America” is an “agequake” or a “demographic time bomb.”
Older people are likely to be seen as a burden and a drain on resources, rather than a resource in themselves. Their only contribution, it seems, is to make worse the “dependency ratio,” a term that enshrines dubious assumptions about who will be financially dependent on whom.
In 2050, Americans age 65 and over are predicted to almost double in number to 83.7 million, one-fifth of the population. An aging population does pose real challenges, but increasing numbers of people of working age (as traditionally defined) are unemployed today, while growing numbers continue to work beyond pensionable age.
In reality, age can no longer be neatly correlated with economic activity. In particular, old people are themselves significant providers of care, notably the child care provided by grandparents.
To be sure, some older public figures attain “national treasure” status, as cuddly, unthreatening George Burns-type figures. And while “ageist” language demeans and caregivers’ pay remains poor, we no longer cast old people out into the wilds. Instead, innovative services and goods are developing that seek to capitalize on the “silver dollar.”
But the social bias is real, too. When a large sample of Facebook groups created by 20- to 29-year-olds was examined by a team based at the Yale School of Public Health, three-quarters of the groups were found to denigrate old people. More than a third advocated banning old people from public activities like shopping.
Such “gerontophobia” is harmful because we internalize it. Ageism has been described as prejudice against one’s future self. It tells us that age is our defining characteristic and that, as midnight strikes on a milestone birthday, we will become nothing but old — emptied of our passions, abilities and experience, infused instead with frailty and decline.
In their study comparing the memory of young and old Chinese and Americans, Ellen Langer, a social psychologist, and Becca Levy, an epidemiologist, found that the older Chinese people, who, it was hypothesized, were exposed to less ageism than their American counterparts, performed memory tests more like their younger compatriots. Among the Americans, on the other hand, there were significant memory differences between the old and young. The beliefs that we imbibe about our waning powers may turn out to be self-fulfilling. In effect, our culture teaches us how to be old.
The historians Thomas R. Cole and David Hackett Fischer have documented how, at the start of the 19th century, the idea of aging as part of the human condition, with its inevitable limits, increasingly gave way to a conception of old age as a biomedical problem to which there might be a scientific solution. What was lost was a sense of the life span, with each stage having value and meaning.
Perhaps this is why, as a 2006 study found, we mispredict the happiness we expect to feel across the course of our lives and assume that we’ll get more unhappy as we age. In fact, the research shows that the opposite is true. For my part, at 64, I haven’t attained serenity (another stereotype of older people), but I am more able to savor life — and if offered the chance to return to my 14-year-old self, I’d run screaming the other way.
A student of mine, nudging 60, recently called age “the great liberator.” Part of what she meant was that old people simply care less about what others think, but also, I think, that our sense of what’s important grows with age. We experience life more intensely than before, whatever our physical limitations, because we know it won’t last forever. How to enable the growing numbers of old people to live comfortable, meaningful lives is a fundamental issue of equality, with benefits for all. If we make the world better for old people, we make it better for everyone, from stroller-pushers to wheelchair-users.
Maggie Kuhn, the founder of the elder advocacy organization the Gray Panthers, argued that instead of making a fetish of independence, we should value the idea of interdependence between generations. Thus age-friendly cities, like Portland, Ore., rethink urban spaces to make them more accessible and encourage the integration of old people into communal life. And programs like Cleveland’s intergenerational charter schools, which provide lifelong education alongside grades K-8, break down the age apartheid now so common. Instead of seeing each other as generic categories, old and young people can discover each other as individuals.
Age resistance is a futile kind of life resistance: We can’t live outside time, we begin to age the moment we’re born. But the emerging age-acceptance movement neither decries nor denies the aging process. It recognizes that one can remain vital and present, engaged and curious, indeed continue to grow, until one’s dying breath. Then we need only echo the wish of the British psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott: “May I be alive when I die.”
Anne Karpf is a British-based journalist and sociologist, and the author of “How to Age.”
A version of this op-ed appears in print on January 4, 2015, on page SR9 of the New York edition with the headline: The Liberation of Growing Old.
The Liberation of Growing Old
By ANNE KARPF JAN. 3, 2015
LONDON — WHY do we have such punitive attitudes toward old people? Granted, the ancients did hideous things to elders who were unable to work but still needed food and care, but in more recent times, that had changed: In 18th-century New England, it was common for people to make themselves seem older by adding years to their real age, rather than subtracting them.
Once upon a time, “senile” just meant old, without being pejorative. Even “geriatric” was originally a value-free term, rather than part of the lexicon of contempt toward old people.
Yet today, the language used to describe the changing age composition of the population is little short of apocalyptic. We’re told that the “graying of America” is an “agequake” or a “demographic time bomb.”
Older people are likely to be seen as a burden and a drain on resources, rather than a resource in themselves. Their only contribution, it seems, is to make worse the “dependency ratio,” a term that enshrines dubious assumptions about who will be financially dependent on whom.
In 2050, Americans age 65 and over are predicted to almost double in number to 83.7 million, one-fifth of the population. An aging population does pose real challenges, but increasing numbers of people of working age (as traditionally defined) are unemployed today, while growing numbers continue to work beyond pensionable age.
In reality, age can no longer be neatly correlated with economic activity. In particular, old people are themselves significant providers of care, notably the child care provided by grandparents.
To be sure, some older public figures attain “national treasure” status, as cuddly, unthreatening George Burns-type figures. And while “ageist” language demeans and caregivers’ pay remains poor, we no longer cast old people out into the wilds. Instead, innovative services and goods are developing that seek to capitalize on the “silver dollar.”
But the social bias is real, too. When a large sample of Facebook groups created by 20- to 29-year-olds was examined by a team based at the Yale School of Public Health, three-quarters of the groups were found to denigrate old people. More than a third advocated banning old people from public activities like shopping.
Such “gerontophobia” is harmful because we internalize it. Ageism has been described as prejudice against one’s future self. It tells us that age is our defining characteristic and that, as midnight strikes on a milestone birthday, we will become nothing but old — emptied of our passions, abilities and experience, infused instead with frailty and decline.
In their study comparing the memory of young and old Chinese and Americans, Ellen Langer, a social psychologist, and Becca Levy, an epidemiologist, found that the older Chinese people, who, it was hypothesized, were exposed to less ageism than their American counterparts, performed memory tests more like their younger compatriots. Among the Americans, on the other hand, there were significant memory differences between the old and young. The beliefs that we imbibe about our waning powers may turn out to be self-fulfilling. In effect, our culture teaches us how to be old.
The historians Thomas R. Cole and David Hackett Fischer have documented how, at the start of the 19th century, the idea of aging as part of the human condition, with its inevitable limits, increasingly gave way to a conception of old age as a biomedical problem to which there might be a scientific solution. What was lost was a sense of the life span, with each stage having value and meaning.
Perhaps this is why, as a 2006 study found, we mispredict the happiness we expect to feel across the course of our lives and assume that we’ll get more unhappy as we age. In fact, the research shows that the opposite is true. For my part, at 64, I haven’t attained serenity (another stereotype of older people), but I am more able to savor life — and if offered the chance to return to my 14-year-old self, I’d run screaming the other way.
A student of mine, nudging 60, recently called age “the great liberator.” Part of what she meant was that old people simply care less about what others think, but also, I think, that our sense of what’s important grows with age. We experience life more intensely than before, whatever our physical limitations, because we know it won’t last forever. How to enable the growing numbers of old people to live comfortable, meaningful lives is a fundamental issue of equality, with benefits for all. If we make the world better for old people, we make it better for everyone, from stroller-pushers to wheelchair-users.
Maggie Kuhn, the founder of the elder advocacy organization the Gray Panthers, argued that instead of making a fetish of independence, we should value the idea of interdependence between generations. Thus age-friendly cities, like Portland, Ore., rethink urban spaces to make them more accessible and encourage the integration of old people into communal life. And programs like Cleveland’s intergenerational charter schools, which provide lifelong education alongside grades K-8, break down the age apartheid now so common. Instead of seeing each other as generic categories, old and young people can discover each other as individuals.
Age resistance is a futile kind of life resistance: We can’t live outside time, we begin to age the moment we’re born. But the emerging age-acceptance movement neither decries nor denies the aging process. It recognizes that one can remain vital and present, engaged and curious, indeed continue to grow, until one’s dying breath. Then we need only echo the wish of the British psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott: “May I be alive when I die.”
Anne Karpf is a British-based journalist and sociologist, and the author of “How to Age.”
A version of this op-ed appears in print on January 4, 2015, on page SR9 of the New York edition with the headline: The Liberation of Growing Old.
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Tobey on the back of the sofa. He usually drags the rug down off the back & makes a nest of it. :| -
Maya Angelou I note the obvious differences in the human family. Some of us are serious, some thrive on comedy. Some declare their lives ...
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Shots taken around the yard and in front of the porch of the garden finery Andy's tended all season.
