The Birthday Ending with a Zero (Part 2)

August 27, 2016

Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York . He wrote an essay on aging, parts of which I have copied below:

That digit, that 7, makes many things seem different. That simple change in the tens place might not have been accompanied by ominous health issues. But it did ask to be noticed and taken seriously.

I see no gain in trying to outguess aging. Things will proceed as they proceed. My work, it seems to me, is to live as well as I can in whatever number of years or decades remain to me. So far, 70 feels like 50 to me. But I am conscious of that 7 yelling out, “Pay attention! Don’t take any of this for granted! Give it your best!” That’s sound self-advice at any age, of course. But who in their 20s or 50s is thinking about time running out?

It isn’t maudlin or defeatist, or a sign of hypochondria, to experience 70 as a wakeup call to take life seriously. I think it is a gift. Seeing the end gives encouragement to notice the journey. Imagining a limited number of days remaining gives added meaning to the pouring out of this one day. I am asking different questions. I am still concerned with accomplishment and achievement. I want to do “important” things. But I also ask if I used today wisely. Was I as kind to my wife as I could be? Did I try to make a difference in my world?

If the answers are negative, I don’t kiss it off. I vow to do better tomorrow. I know my flaws and shortcomings. I don’t expect to surmount them entirely. But neither will I let them win. The point isn’t to have a grand finale that compensates for a life marred by mistakes, shortcomings and regrets. The point is to make the journey forward as much as it can be. Today’s chapter – illuminated by the digit 7 – is the passage I can take seriously. Whether or not I was the world’s greatest husband at 40 is immaterial. I can be a good husband now.

Aging isn’t a death sentence. If there is a death sentence, it is life itself. Aging is a new, promising and, yes, challenging portion of the path. It ends where all of life ends. But the portion itself seems brilliant with possibilities. Not the same possibilities that arrived at age 16, and yet just as exciting. The intoxicating taste of freedom, for example. Not unlike the freedom that came with my first driver’s license. I treasure the freedom to say exactly what I want to say, to write what I want to write, to allocate time to things that seem to matter, whether or not they are productive, applause-worthy or even reasonable. I treasure sitting in front of six computer screens – knowing that one would do, but not caring whether anyone thinks six is too many.

The gift of seeing the end says, Don’t waste time trying to please people. Just live. So the 7 is a gift. If it takes a “creak,” or even a “groan,” to signal that gift, so be it.

Denver International Airport 10:00 PM, August 5th- 8:00 AM, August 6th

August 10, 2016

When Aspen Airport was so fogged in that our San Francisco-Aspen plane was unable to land, we were diverted to the Denver International Airport, about a four or five hour drive from Aspen. Arriving at 10:30 PM we stood in United Airlines "Customer Service Line" for almost two hours before being able to rebook another flight at 8:00 am, but discovering at the same time that there were no hotel rooms remaining in the Western United States for Friday, August 5th, 2016. However, if we could find a way to get to Poughkeepsie, NY, we were assured of a good night's rest.

United Airlines gifted us with totally useless $60 food vouchers, which, even if there were any restaurants open, would have only been able to serve microwaved omelets or deep-fried peaches.. So, at 12:30 am, having booked a flight to Aspen, and knowing that we had only to "hang out" at the airport for seven more hours or so, I took my leave of the refrigerated carpeted area where we had chosen to lie down, move away from the recorded voices urging us to report any suspicious activity, and began to see just what happens at an airport between the last flight of the night and the first flight of the day. Here it is:

12:30 am.  Glass is squeegeed. — 12:30 am. Glass is squeegeed.

1:00 am.  Chrome by the moving sidewalks is buffed. — 1:00 am. Chrome by the moving sidewalks is buffed.

2:00 am.  Carpets are cleaned. — 2:00 am. Carpets are cleaned.

2:30 am.  Moving sidewalks get the Royal Treatment.  The worker doesn't move. — 2:30 am. Moving sidewalks get the Royal Treatment. The worker doesn't move.

3:00 am.  Bathrooms are cleaned and vacuumed. — 3:00 am. Bathrooms are cleaned and vacuumed.

3:30 am.  The USA Today arrives at bookstores and newsstands. — 3:30 am. The USA Today arrives at bookstores and newsstands.

4:00 am.  The last carpets in the departure lounges are cleaned, and the cans are all emptied. — 4:00 am. The last carpets in the departure lounges are cleaned, and the cans are all emptied.

4;30 am.  The tile and marble floors are polished. — 4;30 am. The tile and marble floors are polished.

4:45 a.m.  Dusting continues. — 4:45 a.m. Dusting continues.

4:50 am.  The shoe shine man begins reading. — 4:50 am. The shoe shine man begins reading.

4:55 am.  The finishing touches on the recently refurbished and remanufactured Egg McMuffins are applied. — 4:55 am. The finishing touches on the recently refurbished and remanufactured Egg McMuffins are applied.

At 5:00 am the first Egg McMuffins were distributed, someone showed up to have his shoes shined, Caribou Coffee received the first of our $10 vouchers, and the buffers, squeegeers, the polishers, the bathroom cleaners, the trash emptiers, the deliverymen, and all the other faceless minorities (almost all Hispanics) disappeared so that both flights and Big Macs could resume under the veil of cleanliness and efficiency. As for us, we climbed aboard a tiny plane for a bumpy ride through clouds over the Rockies, and landed 25 minutes later, safe and exhausted.

Serendipity August 8, 2016

August 08, 2016

"Rows and floes of angel hair

And ice cream castles in the air

And feather canyons everywhere

I've looked at clouds that way..."

3:22 Mountain Time, feeling a bit guilty about waking Sean and Greg, who drove us to downtown Glenwood Springs so we could board the bus to Aspen, arriving at 6 am, an hour before our scheduled Aspen-SF flight. Thunder and lightning lit up the early morning Colorado skies. Aspen's airport is tucked into the Rockies, and fog and rainy weather had prevented our landing there four days ago, so leaving in a storm wasn't a given. The skies lightened, the storm passed, and we boarded our little United Express jet, and with our tray tables stowed and our seatbacks in a locked and upright position, we left the gate, then Aspen.

I sat on the right side of the plane, my iPhone in hand as the plane hurtled down the runway just as the sun broke through the clouds. For the next ten minutes or so we were treated to the most amazing cloud formations which I'm sharing in this blog.

Sitting in Seat 17D and pressing my iPhone 6S plus against the window...

I've looked at clouds from both sides now

From up and down, and still somehow

It's cloud illusions i recall

I really don't know clouds at all...Joni Mitchell

After passing through security, I saw this through the windows of Gate #2, a three photo panorama of the mountains around Aspen.

A Birthday Ending in a Zero

July 03, 2016

A New Yorker cartoon several years showed a despondent young man leaning against a fence. Off to the side one of his friends asked another, "What's the matter with Jason?" The friend answered, "He's sad because today he hit the big One O." Well, shortly I'll hit a big "O", too, and I've navigated my way through the One O, the Two O, the Three O, the Four O, the Five O (played Pebble Beach for that one), Six O (greatest thrill of all time with daughter and son-in-law returning from Nepal for that one), and now in a few days, the big—and yes, it does seem really big to me— Seven O.

I just returned from a high school reunion in Cincinnati where everyone present either hit or will hit the big Seven O this year. We had a wonderful time, and I reconnected with my high school rock n' roll band to play songs of the early sixties, the time when we last played together. We remembered and played them faultlessly, knowing each other's musicianship as well fifty-three years later as well as we did when we played in the Battle of the Bands in Covington, Kentucky in 1962.

It was a wonderful three days, reconnecting with old friends, and recognizing that although most of us are retired and closing in on the end of our lives there is much that brings us happiness, love, gratitude, and joy.

I took a class last year called "A Year to Live", in which we studied and practiced not being here. We did exercises that involved giving up things we cherished, writing our eulogies, even discussing the words we'd like to have on our tombstones. Our final exercise was to spend a half hour or so on a busy street imagining that everything we saw and experienced could—and was—taking place whether we were there or not. And when we're no longer there, people will still line up in Starbucks, cross the street in front of Andronico's, and put coins in the meters along Solano Avenue. Nothing will change, except that we won't be there. We're all a part of this great fabric of life, and the fabric will be there whether our thread is part of it or not.

So this is a time for me to look back on the last sixty-nine years and three hundred and some odd days and celebrate all the richness in my life—my loving wife, my three children, my five grandchildren, the wonderful home and community in which I live, the soft blowing summer fog and the deep rich colors of the winter sunsets over the Golden Gate Bridge.

Oliver Sacks, after learning that he had terminal cancer, wrote this:

"I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.

Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure."

I haven't written nor have I read nearly as much as I should have. But I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal on this beautiful planet, and for the privilege of sitting in the front seat of this roller coaster the whole time I cannot express my gratitude and appreciation deeply enough.

Lava Falls (Yes, perhaps not the greatest composition, but our raft was in the rapids, too.  I tried to take about five shots of raft #2, but this was the only one in which the raft was in the photo). — Lava Falls (Yes, perhaps not the greatest composition, but our raft was in the rapids, too. I tried to take about five shots of raft #2, but this was the only one in which the raft was in the photo).

188 Miles on a raft, May 22-28

May 30, 2016

Jadyne and I just returned from a six day raft trip down the Colorado and through the Grand Canyon. The piece de resistance on day six was Lava Falls, a treacherous journey not more than a mile above our final campsite. The rapids on the Colorado are all numbered. One is the easiest. Ten is the most dangerous. Lava Falls is off the charts. Even one of our three guides, seated in the bow of the raft, was almost tossed into the turbulent frigid waters as the raft ducked, buckled, and bounced its way down river. We were all soaked, laughing, and grateful. It was the perfect ending to a perfect trip. Dozens of rapids, hikes, side canyons, and the warmer waters of the rivers that flow into the Colorado—the bluish "Little Colorado" the waters of the Havasu, countless waterfalls, slot canyons, steep hikes, and gourmet food—grilled ribeye steaks and even Eggs Benedict.

The next day we floated one more mile, climbed aboard a helicopter, then rode a short shuttle ride to a small paved runway, flew eighty miles to Boulder City, took another bus to Las Vegas, Virgin America to SFO, then Uber to Kensington. Last night Jadyne woke up and went to put her sandals on so she could walk to the toilet by the river. Readjustment may take another day or two. The sand was finer than dust. Getting rid of it will take a lot longer.

No internet, no news, no contact, no cell phones (cameras only). If "less is more", then "nothing is even better than more," as we slept in sleeping bags on cots under the clear star-filled sky, watching shooting stars and satellites before nodding off, then repeating it all again. the next day. Fearing damage to my DSLR I managed to squeeze off a few hundred photos with my Point n' Shoot, a few of which I'm posting below.

The only four mile nearly straight stretch on the Colorado.  We climbed up 600' to the "Granary", a place where the natives stored grains a thousand years ago. — The only four mile nearly straight stretch on the Colorado. We climbed up 600' to the "Granary", a place where the natives stored grains a thousand years ago.

Lunch break in a cave that could hold thousands

My Life Behind a Lens

May 21, 2016

As a former English teacher, now photographer, I'm very conscious about the grammar, the content, and the images that I post in both the website and the blog. Not just "your" and "you're" or "its" and "it's," but the meat and potatoes of what it is that makes reading about and looking at these images rewarding. They are a synopsis of what I've done with a camera over the past forty-seven years. Virtually none of these images were work-related, meaning that I took them because "I like to take pictures." I feel naked without a camera.

Last year I took a class called "A Year to Live." One of our assignments was to write our own eulogy. In mine I quoted a document I wrote nearly forty years ago (when I was an English teacher) that I posted on a sticker that I placed on the back of every photograph I wanted to sell. Here it is:

"Henry Thoreau recognized that life was filled with brief moments wherein things reveal themselves for what they really are, moments he called “fabulous realities.”

It is in search of these, the elusive expression, or the instant when the sun and sky and water come together that I take my camera.

I have spent the last five years in Sonoma County, California, watching and photographing the autumn grape harvest, the waves crashing the rugged California coastline, and the sun struggling to touch the majestic redwoods, in the damp secluded forests along the Russian River.

In quieter moments I search the leaf-lined creek beds for the subtle earth colors of seasons changing and seasons past, or the faces of my children for the wonder of childhood with its joys and disappointments. Perhaps that is why many of my close-up photographs mean so much to me, that in the smaller corners of our lives there live—to paraphrase William Blake—the grain of sand that possesses infinity,

and the hour that speaks for all eternity.

I seek those things in our lives which may last only for a moment, or are so small as to be almost invisible, but which nevertheless remind us of

the eternities and infinities that lie both within and without us."

Thirty some-odd years later I was asked to submit a current bio. Here it is:

"I like to take pictures."

And that's it. I've always appreciated that others enjoy my images, but mostly I take these for myself. It's what I do. I like to take pictures.

Cameras

May 21, 2016

They all do the same thing—take a three-dimensional scene, remove one dimension and arrest all movement. Whether you use a Hasselblad ($40,000) or an iPhone (a whole lot less), the photographer's responsibility is to see the world as it is, to recognize that by arresting movement and removing a dimension. he has the capacity to remake what he sees in a new way, one that the rest of might not see. When Picasso took a bicycle seat and handlebars and reassembled them he found a bull's head. Discovering how the camera transforms light and movement, the things that are known and visible, into something new and exciting is endlessly pleasing. That's why I always carry a camera. And it's more likely to be an iPhone, not a Hasselblad.

Lillian and Isla, cousins, were captured as they are by my daughter-in-law, Rachel McGraw, using her iPhone.  Even Annie Leibovitz suggests that most of us won't ever need anything more.. — Lillian and Isla, cousins, were captured as they are by my daughter-in-law, Rachel McGraw, using her iPhone. Even Annie Leibovitz suggests that most of us won't ever need anything more..