Poets' Wisdom about Ourselves as We Grow Older

      Last week I finished collecting into a book 75 poems about aging. I don't remember who gave me this idea, and unfortunately, I didn't write down his or her name, but it was a good item for the 75x75 project because I got to read lots of poetry. 

       Some poems to put in the book were no-brainers: T. S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (one of my favorite poems); Yeats's poems about old age (the beginning of one is quoted on my stairs: "When have I last looked on/The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies/Of the dark leopards of the moon?"); Robert Frost's "Death of the Hired Man," which I memorized years ago; Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night."

      Then I started searching. I found various lists on various websites and chose from them. Reading one poet led me to memories of another. In the end I collected about 85 poems, from poets I have known for decades, from contemporary poets I have read before, from names I had never heard of. Choosing the 75 I liked best was no easy task, though I do have my favorites.

      What I learned from this exercise is that many poets who live into old age write about old age, – Yeats, Kunitz, Atwood, Donne. Others write about what they think old age will look like or what it looks like in another person: Coleridge ("Youth and Age"), Jeffers ("Fawn's Foster-Mother"), Tennyson ("Ulysses"). Some welcome old age with gentleness (Mary Oliver; Ursula LeGuin); others rage against it (Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night") or view it with irony (A. R. Ammons, "In View of the Fact"). The variety makes for a good read. 

      The book about people who have accomplished great things after the age of 75 was spiral bound. For variety, I made this one a collection in a three-ring binder. Instead of typing the poems all in the same font, I copied them from books, some from one anthology, some for another, some from a poet's book of poems, some cut out and glued on. The different pages add to the interest.

      Below I've  copied one of my favorites (omitting "Prufrock" because it's too long). I've chosen "A History of High Heels" by Tony Hoagland, who died a week or so ago, so this is kind of a tribute to him. Below that is a list of all the poems, in the hopes that you will look them up and savor these words of wisdom about ourselves as we grow older. (An asterisk just means it's a poem I particularly like.)

      A History of High Heels

by Tony Hoagland

It's like God leaned down long ago and said,

to a woman who was just standing around,

"How would you like a pair of shoes

that shoves the backs of your feet up about four inches

so you balance always on your tiptoes

and your spine roller-coasters forward, then back,

so that even when you are spin-doctoring a corporate merger

or returning from your father's funeral in Florida,

your rump sticks out in a fertility announcement

and your chest is pushed out a little bit in front of you

the way that majorettes precede a marching band?"

No, I shouldn't have said that – I'm sorry.

It's just my curdled bitterness talking; it's just

            my disappointment flaring up

in a toxic blaze of misdirected scorn –

because today is one of those days when I am starting to suspect

that sex was just a wild-goose chase

in which I honk-honk-honked away

      three-quarters of my sweet, unconscious life.

Now my hair is gray, and I'm in the Philadelphia airport,

where women are still walking past me endlessly

with that clickety-clack, clickety-clack,

flipping their hair and licking their teeth,

while underneath my own shoes

I suddenly can feel the emptiness of space;

and over my head, I see light falling from the sky

that all these years

I might have been leaning back

to gaze at and long for and praise.

75 Poems about Aging

1. Anonymous, Beowulf (lines 1722b-1768)

2. Adcock, Fleur, "Mrs. Baldwin"

3. Ammons, A. R., "In View of the Fact"

4. Angelous, Maya, "On Aging"

5. Arnold, Matthew, "Growing Old"

6. Atwood, Margaret, "Daguerreotype Taken in Old Age"

7. Cabral, Olga, "Lillian's Chair"

8. Carroll, Lewis, "You Are Old, Father William"

9. Southey, Robert, "The Old Man's Comforts, and How He Gained Them" (a take-off on Carroll's poem)

10. Cavafy, Constantine, "The God Forsakes Anthony"

*11. Chase, Linda, "Old Flame"

12. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, "Youth and Age"

13-14. Collins, Billy, two poems ("Forgetfulness" and "The Golden Years")

15. Creeley, Robert, "Age"

16-19. Four sonnets by John Donne ("Death Be Not Proud," "As Due by Many Titles," "Thou Hast Made Me," "This Is My Play's Last Scene")

*20-21. T. S. Eliot, two poems ("Prufrock" and "Gerontion")

22. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, "Terminus"

23. Fainlight, Ruth, "Aging"

24. Feinstein, Elaine, "Long Life"

25-39. Robert Frost, five poems ("Stopping by Woods," "Nothing Gold Can Stay," "An Old Man's Winter Night," "Provide, Provide," "Death of the Hired Man")

30. Hall, Donald, "Affirmation"

*31. Hoagland, Tony, "A History of High Heels"

*32. Hopkins, Gerard Manley, "Spring and Fall"

33. Hughes, Ted, "Old Age Gets Up"

34-35. Jeffers, Robinson, two poems ("Vulture" and "Fawn's Foster-Mother")

36. Joseph, Jenny, "Warning"

37. Justice, Donald, "Men at Forty"

*38. Kunitz, Stanley, "Touch Me"

39. Larkin, Philip, "Aubade"

40-41. LeGuin, Ursula, two poems ("My birthday Present," "The Arts of Old Age")

42. Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, "Nature"

43. Lu Yu, "Written in a Carefree Mood"

44. Silverstein, Shel, "The Little Boy and the Old Man"

*45. Marvell, Andrew, "To His Coy Mistress"

46. McClatchy, J. D. "Wolf's Trees"

*47-48. McGough, Robert, two contradictory poems ("Let Mew Die a Youngman's Death" and "Not for Men a Youngman's Death")

49. Milosz, Czslaw, "Late Ripeness"

50-52. Oliver, Mary, three poems ("When Death Comes," "The Gift," "I Worried")

53. Parini, Jay, "His Morning Meditations" 

54. Randolph, Thomas, "Upon His Portrait"

55. Kaufman, Wallace, "Untitled" (his take on Randolph's poem)

56. Chief Seattle (words)

57-60. Shakespeare, William, four sonnets (#2, 60, 66, and 73)

61. Duffy, Maureen, "That time of year thou mayst in me behold"

62. Sitwell, Dame Edith, "The Poet Laments the Coming of Old Age"

63. Swir, Anne, "She Is Sixty"

64. Tagore, Rabindranath,  "Closed Path"

65-66. Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, two poems ("Ulysses," "Crossing the Bar")

*67. Thomas, Dylan, "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night"

68. Woo, David, "Eden"

*69. Wright, David, "Lines of Retirement after Reading Lear"

*70-75. W. B. Yeats, six poems ("Sailing to Byzantium," "The Circus Animals' Desertion," "The Wild Old Wicked Man," "When You Are Old," "The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner," and "Lines Written in Dejection")

Four-month Assessment

      On the 20th of each month, I assess how well I'm doing with the 75 x 75 project. I don't want to look at the list of 75 things a month before my birthday and see that I still have half of them to do! I want to keep up with progress.

      On November 20 I had finished 28 of the 75 items. Some of those were easy (eat 75 blueberries; donate $75 to the Applegater), but some were more complex: write down a memory for each year of my life (difficult not because each year didn't have a memory but because I couldn't remember what happened in which year and because I had a hard time omitting memories), hike to a 7500-foot altitude (fun!), knit something based on 75 stitches.

 I had, in total, accomplished 54% of all items, somewhat ahead of the percentage per month necessary for even distribution of tasks2. It looks like I'm in pretty good shape until you look at what's left. I can't identify 75 botanical items on one hike until wild flower season or hike 75 miles until the snow melts. I have a lot more new dishes to cook, a lot more new words to add to my vocabulary (reading Moby Dick has helped), and a lot more hikes or skis to do, to say nothing of taking sixty-two more swims, somehow, before July 20. The last swim was on the 18th of November, in the Smith River of Northern California.

      I'm coming along well with writing 75 poems of 75 words each. (See today's post at dianacoogle.blogspot.com for two of those poems.) I haven't strung 75 beads or made a crown with 75 dried flowers or created a collage of 75 pieces. I have collected 75 rocks (91, actually), but I haven't created the Goldsworthy-style art piece with them yet. I haven't learned to count to 75 in a new language, but I have learned how to say, "Hello. What's your name? Good-bye" in 56 languages. Nineteen to go! My granddaughter, who gave me that challenge, opened her atlas while I was with her at Thanksgiving and gave me thirteen more languages: Marshallese, Kyrgyz, Dioula (from the Ivory Coast and Mali), Kurdish, Xhosa, Luxembourgish, Makhuwa (from Mozambique), Palauan, Kinyarwanda, Melanesian (from the Solomon Islands), Somalian, and Isi Zulu (from South Africa). I'll learn any of them that has a YouTube segment telling me how to pronounce the phrases. As for Samo, which she also suggested, I was lucky enough to get a Lyft driver from Samoa on my way to the train station in Tacoma, who taught me to say Malo (hello), Olé halo i goa (what is your name), and Tofa (good-bye). I also sat next to two students in a coffee shop who were learning sign langue, so they taught me how to say those three phrases in that language.

      Learning the languages is my second favorite item. Hugging 75 trees is my favorite. I've already hugged 74 trees, but I still want to hug blossoming trees this spring. Then I'll pick out the best tree-hugging pictures and make a book of them. Here's one, from Redwoods National Park, that'll certainly go in:

75 Prayers for the Earth and Humanity

      My Thanksgiving Day post for dianacoogle.blogspot.com was to list the first half of the 75 prayers for the Earth and humanity that I was challenged to write for the 75x75 project. Here is the rest of the list.

42. May the oceans stay cold and the glaciers hold their shapes.

43. May the chickens range free.

44. May the cows eat grass.

45. May the lambs cavort in pastures.

46. May the pigs live in peace.

47. May every queen bee have her hive.

48. May the rhinoceros live to see another century and more.

49. May every goose find her gander, every billy his nanny, and every hind her hart.

50. May the border wall never get built.

51. May governments never separate children from loving parents.

52. May the EPA return to its former days of integrity and enlightenment.

53. May our schools and universities serve their deepest purposes.

54. May our children and young people find fulfillment in their pursuits and joy in their lives.

55. May the wilds stay forever wild.

56. May the stars shine bright in clear skies all over the world.

57. May the lakes stay full and cold.

58. May the wilderness areas and the National Parks forever be places of soul renewal.

59. May the Supreme Court function with ethics, intelligence, and commitment to American democratic values, foregoing political considerations.

60. May there always be reason to rejoice.

61, May we always heal with laughter.

62. After four decades of war in Iraq: may it end.

63. May we learn to set aside our differences in order to pay tribute to what is best in each of us.

64. May there be clean drinking water everywhere on earth.

65. May the human species learn to live as one species among all the others, with equal respect for all.

66. May the current reversal of environmental protections be reversed back at least to where they were BDT.

67. May we show our love for Lady Nature so she will come back again.

68. May we learn to trust again.

69. May the plague of plastic be cleaned from the seas.

70. May the dolphins play and the whales sound the deep in peace.

71. May music resound everywhere in the world, always.

72. May the cities flourish with art, music, and the good works of the poets.

73. May we always butcher with gratitude the animals who give their lives so we may live.

74. May the eagle's eye be sharp, the deer's ear keen, and the bear's nose honed to every odor in the woods.

75. May the world and all its living beings thrive and prosper.

Age 75 Is No Stopping Point!

      My friend Wallace Kaufman gave me the 75x75 project of compiling a list of people who accomplished significant things in their lives after the age of 75. 

      The accomplishments make your jaw drop. For instance, there's Dr. Leila Denmark, who didn't retire as a practicing pediatrician until she was 103. She lived to be 114, the fourth-oldest-verified person in the world. AND SHE WAS MY DOCTOR, the pediatrician my mother took all her children to. I put her first in my book.

Dr. Denmark, with patient and patent's mother

      Other people in science, medicine, and economics include Dr. Ruth, who was still performing on TV when she was 79. 

      The next heading is "literature," with 14 names of people who have published after the age of 75. I love it that Roget was still overseeing editions of his famous thesaurus, which I still use, of course (so much better than the online thesaurus!), until he died at the age of 90. The poet Stanley Kunitz published an autobiography when he was 100, but my favorite entry here is the little known Harry Bernstein, who published his first book, an autobiographical novel, when he was 97 and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship at the age of 98 "to pursue his writing." He published the third book in his series of autobiographical novels the following year and died the next year at the age of 100. 

      There are only three entries in the section of "Music," including pianist Arthur Rubinstein, who performed "one of his greatest recitals" in Carnegie Hall when he was 89.

     "Film and Theater" has five entries, some that you might expect – Jessica Tandy (Academy Award for Best Actress, Driving Miss Daisy – at age 80) and Christopher Plummer (Oscar at age 82, Beginners), but do you remember the 1984 Wendy's commercial, "Where's the beef?" Clara Peller, the actress in that commercial, was 81 and had only just been "discovered" as a feisty, spicy actress.

Clara Peller

      Next to "literature," with fourteen entries, "visual arts" suggests a field in which the artist can continue well into old age. There are ten entries in my book. You might have come up with Georgia O'Keeffe and Grandma Moses without too much thinking, but also included are Michelangelo, Marc Chagall, and a former slave from Alabama, Bill Traylor, who taught himself to paint at the age of 85, exhibited at 87, and had his New York debut at 89. My favorite entry is my mother, who had an art show when she was 88, of pastel paintings she had done with her left arm after a stroke left her right arm paralyzed.

      A omnigatherum of accomplishments in law, chess, religion, and aeronautics brings in four people (the 19th-century British Lord Chancellor Hardinga Giffard, Asa Long, Mary Baker Eddy, and John Glenn, respectively). Achievements in education include a number of advanced degrees at advanced ages (including the oldest college graduate ever, Nola Ochs, with a masters degree at age 99), but my favorite entry is the Kenyan Kimani Maruge, who entered first grade at the age of 84 and addressed the United Nations in New York (first time on an airplane) the following year, on the importance of free primary education.

Kimani Maruga, in first-grade class

      There are the statesmen and political activists, such as Ghandi and Marjorie Stoneman Douglas (eight of them), but the biggest category by far is "physical achievements," with twenty entires, beginning with my father, who built a barn at the age of 80 and, between the ages of 85 and 95, turned a large wooden screw, on a lathe he made himself, for a historical village's reproduction of an ox-turned cotton baler .

      In this category are mountain climbers, sailors, runners (including  Fauja Singh, the first person to finish a marathon at 100), hikers, the highwire performer William Ivy Baldwin (who was 82 when he did his last highwire walk, over a canyon in Eldorado Springs, Colorado), one swimmer, one bungee jumper (at age 96), and one water skier (still skiing at 101). The most remarkable entry in the whole book, though, in my opinion, is Tao Porchon-Lynch, who is still teaching yoga at 100.

Tao Porchon-Lynch, in lotus position

     It looks like I have a lot to do after my 75th birthday in July!

Trees, Hikes, Strangers, Music, and Political Action

 In one weekend last week I fulfilled five repetitions of the 75 items on my list.

      1. Take 75 hikes (Phil Straffin, Marion Haddon). The Cameron Meadows trail, in the Siskiyou Mountains of Southern Oregon, was a great way to add one more hike to the 75 I intend to do this year. (See  dianacoogle.blogspot.com for a description of this hike.) So far I've done 29 hikes since July 20.

      2. Hug 75 trees (Laura Martin). Not only was the trail spectacularly beautiful in its autumn finery, but it provided me with some great trees to hug – salmon-leafed dogwoods, yellow-splashed maples, and some huge old-growth cedars, firs, and pines. That I couldn't get my arms around the cedar didn't make the hug any less sincere than the one I gave the dogwood I could wrap arms and legs around.

I love incense cedars.

      3. Do 75 political actions (Mariposa Kerchival and Verne Underwood). Earlier in the week I had realized that with the election coming up in about two weeks, I had better step up my political actions now, so after Saturday's hike, I hurried to town to take part in a postcard writing campaign to get out the vote. The emphasis was on getting Jamie McLeod-Skinner elected. I started each post card: "Let's oust Walden!" It would be so exciting if McLeod-Skinner won this race. I, like a lot of people I know, would breathe a sigh of relief to send her to Washington instead of Walden.

      4. Listen to 75 pieces of new music from around the world (Chelsea and Tyler). The next day I went to the Rogue Valley Symphony concert and heard the world premier of Malek Jandali's Concerto for Viola and Orchestra. Jandali is Syrian-American and had incorporated Syrian folk songs in his concerto, so it was certainly "new music from around the world." 

      5. Talk to 75 strangers (Sharon Coogle). During intermission, I turned to the woman sitting next to me, a stranger, and started a conversation. Was she with the two children and woman sitting on the other side of her? I was interested because the children were there on the voucher program the Friends of the Symphony have provided to bring young people to these concerts, and I wondered if the children were musicians. Yes, the woman was with them but not related, just a friend, and then she talked and talked and talked about herself, all about her HUD housing and moving here from Ashland and a long story about doing research on some little known event in World War I or the Revolutionary War or something I couldn't keep up with and wanting to go to Washington D.C. to look things up, something about her ancestors; I stopped trying to follow the story. I listened politely, but I was glad when intermission was finally over and she had to stop talking. It was not a good experience. It reminded me of why I don't talk to strangers.

      I had rather hug trees.

Doing "75 Things" in Georgia and Alabama

      Last week I made a trip to Georgia for a wedding in Alabama. Before the wedding my family and I walked through the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, where I had the great pleasure of hugging some trees.

Swamp magnolia

Toshino cherry

Common banana

      Usually, on an airplane, I sit in my seat and keep to myself, but on this trip I was determined to take advantage of the opportunity to talk to strangers. (I think I can;  I think I can.) My seat mate on the first plane looked Indian or mid-Eastern, so I was excited about asking him how to say "hello" "good-bye," and "what is your name?" in his native language, too, so I could check off two boxes in the 75s columns: "talk to 75 strangers" and "learn hello, good-bye, and what is your name? in 75 languages," but he seemed too involved in his computer work to interrupt, so I shrank into my usual shell and didn't bother him. On the return, however, I sat next to an interesting young woman with whom I had a nice conversation. It was easy.

       I took a hike on the Appalachian Trail with my brother and two sisters, too, while I was in Georgia. (I have now done 27 hikes and will do another today, so I'm doing well with this item.) It was a steep trail but a beautiful day, and we met a lot of people also hiking – families,  couples, day-hikers, backpackers. My sister, in front of me, chatted easily for a moment with each hiker. Behind her, I smiled, said, "Hi," and passed on by until I pointed out to her that I was the one who needed to talk to strangers. After that, she said, "Hi," and passed on by, letting me be the one to say, "Where did you camp last night? How long have you been out? How did you fare in the rain?" 

      It's my general modus operandi to smile, say, "Hi," and pass on by, but I'm learning that it's not difficult, in such a situation, to talk to a stranger and that it's pleasant and friendly and makes everyone feel good.

       I drank some new wine with my siblings, had three swims in Lake Lanier (where the four of us spent a couple of days at Laura's lake house), and gave a ton of compliments – Laura on how well she played Beethoven's piano sonata, Sharee on her new svelte figure, Lee on beautiful photographs from his raft trip in the Grand Canyon.

      When I returned home, I got a 75-minute massage. 

      I have now completed 23 of the 75 things to do in my 75th year.

Volunteering 75 minutes somewhere new

      Last week I fulfilled one of the suggestions I like most for my 75x75 project: to volunteer somewhere new for 75 minutes. (Dave Dobbs and Jen Thoennes both suggested this item.) I thought a lot about where I would like to put that time: a food kitchen, answering phones for the Jefferson Public Radio on-air fundraiser, trail maintenance for the Applegate Trails Association…. And then, last August, partly in response to my book, At the Far End of Life: My Parents' Aging – and Then My Own, I was invited to tour Medford's new hospice facility, the Holmes Park House. 

(I wrote about the Holmes Park House at dianacoogle.blogspot.com on August 10.) I was so impressed with the beautiful facility and the compassionate and friendly staff – and I feel so strongly about easing the process of dying – that I decided, by suggestion of Sue Carroll, the volunteer coordinator, to be a volunteer reader at the Holmes Park House. Sue said I could read to the residents in their rooms or do readings for residents and their families as well as staff and volunteers in the living room or library.

The beautiful library at the Holmes Park House

      Last week I did my first reading at the Holmes Park House, in the living room, to six staff members and volunteers. Although the hospice is a place where people come to die, so that death is a frequent occurrence, having eight deaths in the week preceding my visit had left the personnel reeling. That sudden emptiness, from ten residents to two (now three; another has moved in), leant a poignancy to the essays I was reading and determined, to an extent, which ones I chose. 

      I read from two of my books, Wisdom of the Heart, a "metaphysical journey through life," and Living with All My Senses, my book about living close to nature in the house I built deep in the Siskiyou Mountains. I didn't have a program but chose essays spontaneously, led by the conversation. When Sue told me about the tradition, at the Holmes Park House, of putting a rose in a vase on the vestibule table to honor the passing of one of their residents (the vase was full of roses that day), I read "The Peace Rose, the Still Mountain, and the Heart of the House" from Wisdom of the Heart. The essay about touch in that same book led to a discussion about the importance of touch to people who are dying: other senses diminish, so touch becomes a great communicator (something I should keep in mind for readings to residents). That discussion led to an essay from Living with All My Senses about synesthesia, which ends with an image of a flight of geese with an albino goose in its midst: "Keeping up wingbeat for wingbeat in the rhythmic pulse of flight, it was like a negative of its neighbors, like a placeholder. It must be like that to have a beloved companion die: an emptiness in the shape of that person where that person had once always been."

      One of the best things about my 75x75 project is the effects of doing the various items. I learn something new every time I do one, or doing one leads to something bigger and longer lasting than doing it just that one time. That 75-minute reading at the Holmes Park House has encouraged me to put in more volunteer hours there. Next time, I look forward to reading to the residents, hoping to bring some pleasure to the individuals who are experiencing those last days of life. 

      

Moving along, with hikes, swims, and languages

      It has been my great pleasure to be working this past week on two of my favorite 75x75 items: take 75 hikes (or skis – suggested by Marion Haddon, Phil Straffin, and Mike Kohn) and take 75 swims (Phil, Mike, and Bob Cook). I did three hikes this past week, two in the Emigrant Wilderness Area, just north of Yosemite National Park (see my blog post this Thursday on dianacoogle.blogspot.com for an account of the first of those trips), and one in the Red Buttes Wilderness Area, half an hour south of my house. While in the Emigrant Wilderness I hugged some trees, but the trees in the Red Buttes were not very huggable!

 I also got in a couple of good swims. Because of the smoke this summer, I haven't been able to swim as much as I might have otherwise, so I'm a little concerned about being behind in this item. I was glad to swim in beautiful Powell Lake in the Emigrant Wilderness Area,

in lily-pad rimmed but still deep and beautiful Grouse Lake in the same wilderness, 

You can see the path of my swim.

and in poor suffering Azalea Lake, which isn't nearly so inviting as it used to be, with its fire-scarred shores.

      My granddaughter's suggested 75s item was to learn to say "Hello," "Good-bye," and "What is your name?" in 75 languages. (Brian and Merri Stephens and Carol Lieberman also suggested learning "Hi" in 75 languages. I chose the three-forked approach.) So far I have learned to say "Hello," "Good-bye," and "What is your name?" in the 25 languages below, categorized for the sake of easier memorization rather than for any scholarly accuracy: 

      5 Nordic languages (Icelandic, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish)

      3 from the British Isles (English, Irish, and Welsh)

      3 from Spain (Spanish, Catalan, Basque)

      4 other Romance languages (French, Rumanian, Italian, Portuguese)

      3 other Germanic languages (German, Dutch, Yiddish)

      2 Slavic languages (Russian, Polish)

  3 other languages from eastern and Northern European countries (Estonian, Lithuanian,                          Hungarian)

      2 outliers (Greek and Hawaiian) 

So far I like to say Hawaiian best, with its mellifluous syllables. "What is your name?" is "O wai kou inoa?" It's a language that flows over the tongue like gentle surf on the beach.

       I also talked to some strangers, did some good deeds, gave some compliments, and hugged more trees. I'm doing pretty well.

Lovingly contemplating Powell Lake with a hemlock tree

Opportunities on the Oregon Coast

      Over the Labor Day weekend I went with Mike to the Oregon Coast near Newport to visit my friend Wallace Kaufman, who lives five miles down a gravel road on the Poole Slough – in the boonies, as they say. Wallace is the 17th of the 75 friends I intend to visit before July 20, and a wonderful visit it was with good conversation, good food and wine, and great kayaking on the slough and in the bay, with opportunities in abundance for adding birds and animals to my 75s lists.  
      Here, for instance, is one of many harbor seals that bobbed around our kayaks in the bay.
   
  I also saw a nutria, an otter-like animal, swimming in the slough and many birds: great blue herons fishing from posts and trees; kingfishers in straight-line upriver dashes and gorgeous wing-fluttering displays as they settled on perches; a red-tail hawk, soaring on the wind currents; swallows; cormorants; gray jays; and beautiful, graceful white egrets.

Photo by Wallace Kaufman

   




     New vocabulary words that came from the long weekend include, besides nutria, Procrustean (to enforce uniformity without attention to individual differences); nonuple, relating to groups of nine, as in parallel with triple, quadruple, and quintuplets (learned from a New York Times crossword puzzle); and gam, a meeting of two ships, especially whaling ships, for an exchange of information, news, etc., a word I learned from Moby Dick, which I'm reading to Mike.



 Here is a picture of Mike and me having a gam on an early-morning kayak paddle to the bay.

Photo by Wallace Kaufman

      Here's picture of the embroidery I did with 75 stitches. The difficulty with this project was to make something small enough! Thanks to Maureen Battistella for this intriguing challenge.

      I did a one-month check-up to see how well I was doing with the 75 x 75 project. (Mike Kohn did the math for me.) The results were encouraging. I've finished 12 items: I ate 75 blueberries for breakfast, jumped rope 75 times, ran 75 yards, wrote a poem with 75 words, wrote another poem about being 75 (with 75 words), listed my 75 favorite books, gave 75 cookies to strangers, donated $75 to the Applegater (our fabulous neighborhood newsmagazine), counted 75 sheep before going to bed (it was hard to keep from falling asleep before I got to 75!), made a quilt with 75 panels, listed 75 favorite things, and listed 75 memories of my dear late friend Maren, each associated with a place. I am more than 50% there with making 75 cards and with writing down 75 prayers for the environment or humanity. Twelve more items made the list with some percentage done. Looked at from this point of view, the list is 23.4% completed. Not bad for the first month.
      That's a little deceiving, though, since some items take a great deal more time than others. "Take 75 hikes or skis" and "take 75 swims" will take more doing than "list your 75 favorite books." And the smoke in southern Oregon has curtailed hiking and swimming for more than a month. Yesterday was the first long hike I've done since July 14, when the lightning storm hit. But with that hike, I also checked off the third of the 75 swims.

It was so beautiful! I love swimming in Towhead Lake.

      On the hike the day before, on the East ART (East Applegate Ridge Trail), I hugged a wonderful white oak tree.

      One of the things I like most about doing 75 x 75 is the awareness it is bringing – how big a number 75 is, how few good deeds I do, how many more birds and animals I see when I start consciously looking for them. I love doing this!

75 Cookies to Strangers

      It was Russ Mitchell who suggested I bake 75 cookies and give them to strangers. What? Walk up to someone on the street and say, "Would you like a cookie?" That would never work. I almost rejected the idea.

      But I liked it, so I figured out how to make it work. I would bake cookies and take them, say, to my car mechanic or my dentist or some such workplace with people who would have no reason not to trust me. So I baked fifteen date bars and took them to an appointment with my insurance agent. 

      Great reception.

      Encouraged, I baked some butter tarts and gave them to a friend to give to his employees, with strict directions to keep them cold, since I had substituted jam for the raisins or nuts called for in the recipe and the cookies were so gooey I couldn't pick them up. Refrigeration worked. 

      They were a great hit.

      Last week– perfect opportunity – I was invited to a party where I figured there would be a bunch of people I didn't know. I found, online, a recipe for Amish sugar cookies that made five dozen cookies and took ten minutes to make (plus baking time). They turned out beautifully, so I put two dozen cookies in four containers each and took them to the party. 

      It took a bit of nerve (talking to strangers was an item my sister suggested because, she said, she knew it would be a challenge for me), but I managed three times to say to the stranger sitting across the table from me, "Would you like some cookies?" The person was invariably amused by the 75 x 75 explanation and, just as invariably, proclaimed the cookies delicious. After doing this three times, I was out of nerve though not out of cookies, so I left the last carton with the hosts, who were not strangers but deserved cookies. 

      In the end I gave away 15 + 15 + (2doz. x 3) = 102 cookies. Thanks to Russ for the idea. It was so much fun I might just keep on doing it. After all, the strangers in my auto mechanic's shop and dentist's office shouldn't miss out just because I've checked the item off my list, don't you agree?

      Here's the recipe for Amish sugar cookies, which are really good. The recipe is a keeper. If you can't eat them all, give them to strangers!

Amish Sugar Cookies

Makes 5 dozen (or more)

Ingredients

1 cup butter, softened

1 cup vegetable oil

1 cup sugar

1 cup confectioners' sugar

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

4-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

Directions

In a large bowl, beat the butter, oil and sugars. Beat in eggs until well blended. Beat in vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda and cream of tartar; gradually add to creamed mixture.

Drop by small teaspoonfuls onto ungreased baking sheets. Bake at 375° until lightly browned, 8-10 minutes. Remove to wire racks to cool.

Crafts for 75 x 75

      The smoke in the Rogue Valley and even here on my mountain has kept me indoors for weeks. I'm chafing at the inactivity, but, on the other hand, I had a chance to make the quilted piece using 75 squares,  for the 75 x 75 project. Two people, both dear friends, suggested this item – Mariposa, in Santa Cruz, and Jen, in Eugene. It's a table runner with 75 pattern squares. (The background, fill-in squares don't count.) I hope Mariposa and Jen like it as much as I do. It was fun to make.

     My sister Laura gave me another idea. She turned me on to WordArt.com. Here's my first piece.

There's still time to join the fun if you haven't sent me your ideas. I'm open to all suggestions! And it really is lots of fun.

(P.S. Do you know about my other blog? dianacoogle.blogspot.com. Check it out. I post regularly on Thursday mornings (unless something interferes, as for instance, not having access to my computer until late this afternoon).

Visiting friends, hugging trees, and running on the University of Oregon campus

      Last week I went to Eugene, 160 miles north, to visit friends, especially the one who is leaving for Idaho soon for her sophomore year in college. Thanks, John Salinas, for suggesting I visit 75 friends for my 75 x 75 project. I'm not sure I would have done this if it weren't for your push.

     So I had lunch with my dear friend Vera, who just turned 89, and then, with a couple of hours before dinner at the Thoenesses, I walked through the University of Oregon campus to hug some of its beautiful trees. I went straight to my favorite tree, an enormous beech.

My favorite tree on campus

I loitered there till someone walked by, whom I approached with a smile, saying, "Excuse me. Would you have a minute to take a picture of me hugging this tree?" Yes, yes, yes, and isn't it a gorgeous tree and are you a visitor to campus? I told him I got my Ph.D. there in 2012 and explained why I was hugging trees, and he said, "Oh, what a great idea; I love the trees on campus and you should hug the Octopus Tree just over there and did you know there is gingko tree by the theater?" 

      After a still more extensive chat, I decided to put back on the 75 x 75 list the deleted suggestion that I have a conversation with 75 strangers. Maybe I can do that, after all.

      Next to the large, many-limbed cedar that is called the Octopus Tree, I snagged a young student walking by and had a similarly good conversation with her. (That's two conversations. Seventy-three to go.) 

Hugging the Octopus Tree

      Now, after hugging eight more trees on campus, I have hugged twenty-four trees, though not the gingko, which I couldn't find.

      I had dinner with the Thoeness family, Jen and Steve and their three children, and spent the night there, thanks to the youngest son, who offered to sleep in the rec room so I could have his bed. When I thanked him, he said, "It was worth it to have you here." So sweet!

      Early the next morning Jen, who suggested I run 75 yards, walked with me to the soccer field on the UO campus to run with me. While I was taking off my sandals to run barefooted on the turf, I looked at the length of the field and thought, "Yes, I think I can run that far," Meanwhile, Jen was asking Siri the dimensions of a soccer field. "Just as I thought," she said: "75 feet" – width, not length. I looked at the width. Why, that was nothing! I could do that.

      One, two, three, and off we set, at what I'll admit was a slow run. ("It's not a race," Jen said.) The end point came quickly, and because I wasn't ready to stop, we turned around and ran the 75 feet back to the starting point. I wasn't even winded. Seventy-five yards twice. Thanks, Jen!

Me with Jen, before our run

Jumping rope

      I did the jumprope! 75 times.
      While I was visiting the Thoeness family (five people among the 75 people to visit this year) in Eugene a few days ago, I mentioned that the jumprope I had bought for my 75 times of jumping rope was too long and I didn't know how to fix it so I could use it. Steve brought out their jumprope to show me how to shorten the rope through the handles. I stood up to measure their rope against my height and thought maybe, since the jumprope was in my hands, I could see if I still remembered how to jump a rope. So I took a trial jump. "One!" Jen said, so of course, if she was counting, I couldn't stop, so on I jumped.

I don't think the video will work, but here's pictorial proof, anyway.

At about 60 I began to wonder if I could actually do 75 jumps, right then, right there. On I went, Jen counting higher and higher. At 72 I stumbled. Drat. Would I have to start all over again? "Keep going!" Jen called, and so I swung the rope three more times, and I had done it. I was slightly winded, but nothing worse, and I had learned what good cardiovascular exercise jumping rope is.
      It was a blast. Thanks to my sister Sharon for this idea. It just might carry on beyond 75.

Hugging Trees

I've been hugging trees lately, when the smoke has thinned enough for me to be outside.

Redwood, Medford, OR

I've hugged twelve trees so far (sixty-three to go). My sister Laura, who suggested this item, said it would remind me of how much I love trees. And so it does.

I've also added two poems to the goal of 75, and fourteen prayers for the earth or humanity. Here are four prayers, a poem of 75 words about the 75 x 75 project, and some pictures of the trees I've been hugging.

#14-17 of 75 prayers
May the songbirds fill the woods and meadows as of old.
May the owls meet in parliaments outside my bedroom window for years to come.
May the smoke clear and the skies be blue again (soon).
May the voice of reason and the aura of compassion prevail.



How Big Is 75?

75 is a big number
if I'm hiking 75 miles
or planting 75 daffodil bulbs
or hugging 75 trees.
It's a little number
for 75 minutes of massage
or giving 75 compliments.
If I'm eating 75 blueberries for breakfast,
it's an adequate number,
but it's an inadequate number
if I'm picking up 75 pieces of trash
or listing family memories.
75 is just a beginning
for making 75 prayers for the earth
or doing
75
good deeds.

Redwood tree, Medford, OR

Walnut tree, Ashland, OR

Cottonwood, near my home

Broad-leaf maple, at my house

Update on July 30: Still enthusiastic

      When I sent my list of 75 favorite books to my sister Laura, who suggested it, she chastised me for leaving out Steinbeck and books from childhood. I was chagrined at having forgotten Steinbeck (Grapes of Wrath, Winter of Our Discontent, The Red Pony) and had thought about The Little Colonel's Hero by Anne Fellows Johnson and, of course, Little Women. Finally, though, I had to decide the list was done and would have to stay as it is: with some serious omissions. Maybe this is a case in which 75 isn't such a big number as it might seem.,
     On the way to Eugene to visit friends, I drove past some horrific clearcuts, which prompted some prayers for the earth to add to the list:
            May the earth forgive our trespasses against it, which are severe and legion.
            May we listen to what the earth is telling us and pay heed.
            May we allow the earth time to lick its wounds and recover.
            May the apple limbs hang low with rosy-cheeked apples.
            May the snow fly thick.
            May the springs flow full.
            May there be a crash in the population of the pine bark beetle.
      One of the most fun things in doing this has been the connection with my friends. If Sharon challenges me to jump rope 75 times, I'll think of her with every jump. Phil suggests I take 75 swims this year, a challenge he knew I would take up with enthusiasm (though I can't swim here now; the smoke curtails all outdoor activity). My friend who loves to run wants me to run 75 yards; my gardening friends suggest I plant flowers; friends I don't see often suggest I visit friends; friends with deep social consciences suggest I volunteer 75 hours or take political action 75 times or do something similar to better the world. It's all on the list.
      I wrote a second poem (73 to go!). It's called "Two Arabian Princesses."
            Two Arabian princesses
            As I heard the tale,
            went shopping in L.A.,
            dripping gold from fingertips
            like water after a bath.
            They bought,
            I thought I heard,
            sixty-five
            hundred-dollar bras.

            But that wasn't it. What
            they bought was
            sixty
            five-hundred-dollar bras.

            A bra that costs $500.

            Is it made with the softest silk
            in the kingdom?
            Is it covered with exquisite lace,
            tatted by a dozen hand-maidens?
            Does it fit like a dream,
            cup the breasts like a lover's hands,
            never ride up
            or pinch the under-arm
            or slip a strap over the shoulder?
            Do the hooks slip into eyes without a wink?
            Is it as delicate as a rose petal
            and as durable as the rising of the sun?
            (Though why would Arabian princesses,
            dripping gold from their fingertips,
            care how long a bra would last?)

             I want to try one on
             just one, just once, just to know
            what the Arabian princesses know.

            But, alas! I am Cinderella in a garret room
            with no fairy godmother at the window.
            Wearing a $500 bra
            Even for five minutes
            is as remote as wearing a glass shoe
            or riding in a pumpkin coach
            or hearing Scheherazade
            tell an Arabian tale
            to the king.

      I have been making progress, but in the meantime, these things have been added:
            "Crafts" – #12. Press 75 flowers.
            "Active"
                              #37. Bring home a stone from each walk you take and make a pile in the yard
                             #38. Stretch and dance for 75 minutes, uninterrupted
                             #39. Get a 75-minute massage
                             #40. Collect 75 items to put on an altar on your 75th birthday
                             #41. Take 75 naps
            "Miscellaneous" –
                         #55. Spend $75 at the store, no more, no less
                         #56. Eat 75 blueberries for breakfast
                         #57. Count 75 sheep before going to sleep

This morning I did #56: I had 75 blueberries for breakfast. Seventy-five, I am discovering, is a big number. Plenty enough blueberries for breakfast.

I have also completed #37, "Make a list of your 75 favorite books." At first I was appalled that I wanted to put some unknown books, like Alan Powers' Living with Books, for instance, on the list. Then I realized that I wasn't making a list of "best books I've ever read" but favorite books. Then I was free. The only criterion was that my heart leapt with delight when I saw it on the bookshelf, which is certainly what happens with Living with Books, which is about the architecture in our homes to accommodate our book habits.
      Here's the list. I had to cull some titles to pare it down to 75. Maybe you'll see some old friends on the list. Maybe you'll remind me of some I had forgotten. It was fun. Thanks to my sister Laura for putting this item on my list of 75 things to do before my 75th birthday.

75 Favorite Books

1. Abbey, Edward – Desert Solitaire
2. Abrams, David – The Spell of the Sensuous
3. Bartram, William – Travels
4. Beowulf
5. de Berniere, Louis – Corelli's Mandolin
6. Berry, Thomas – The Dream of the Earth
7. de Botton, Alain – The Architecture of Happiness
8. Boyle, T. Coraghessan – World's End
9. _________________ – Drop City
10. Bronte, Emily – Wuthering Heights
11. Byatt, A. S. – Possession
12. Camus, Albert – l'Étranger
13. Carey, John – Eyewitness to History
14. Chadwick, Douglas – The Fate of the Elephant
15. Chaucer, Geoffrey – The Canterbury Tales
16. Chomsky, Noam – Transformational Grammar
17. Coetzee, J. M. – Disgrace
18. Cox, Lynn – Swimming to Antarctica
19. Dickens, Charles – Great Expectations
20. Dillard, Annie – Teaching a Stone to Talk
21. Doerr, Anthony – All the Light We Cannot See
22. Durrell, Gerard – My Family and Other Animals
23. Eliot, George – Middlemarch
24. ___________ – Adam Bede
25. Estes, Clarissa Pinkola – Women Who Run with the Wolves
26. Eugenides, Jeffrey –  Middlesex
27. Fadiman, Anne – The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
28. _____________ – Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader
29. Faulkner, William – Absalom! Absalom!
30. ______________ – Short stories: "The Bear" and "Spotted Horses"
31. ______________ – The Sound and the Fury
32. Fernandez-Arresto, Felipe – Near a Thousand Tables
33. Fielding, Henry – Tom Jones
34. Fisher, M. F. K. – The Art of Eating
35. Graham, Katherine – Personal History
36. Hesse, Herman – The Glass Bead Game
37. Hopkins, Gerard Manley – Poems
38. Ishiguro, Kazuo – Never Let Me Go
39. Joyce, James –  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
40. di Lampedusa, Giuseppe Tomasi – The Leopard
41. Leeson, Ted – The Habit of Rivers
42. LeGuin, Ursula – The Earthsea Trilogy
43. Lewis, C. S. – The Narnian Chronicles
44. __________ – Till We Have Faces
45. Marquez, Gabriel Garcia – One Hundred Years of Solitude
46. McGregor, Neil – A History of the World in 100 Objects
47. McPhee, John – Encounters with the Archdruid
48. ____________ – The Control of Nature
49. Melville, Herman – Moby Dick
50. Nabokov, Vladimir – Lolita
51. ________________ – Pnin
52. ________________ – The Gift
53. ________________ – Speak Memory
54. Naslund, Senna Jeter – Ahab's Wife
55. Norton Anthology of English Literature
56. Norton Book of Nature Writing
57. Patchett, Ann – Bel Canto
58. ___________ – The Patron Saint of Liars
59. ___________ – The Magician's Assistant
60. Paulsen, Gary – Riverdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod
61. Pinker, Stephen – The Language Instinct
62. Powers, Alan –  Living with Books
63. Rawicz, Slavomir – The Long Walk
64. Rushdie, Salman – Midnight's Children
65. Saramago, Jose – Blindness
66. Schiff, Stacy – Vera
67. Specht, Robert – Tisha
68. Spenser, Edmund – The Faerie Queene
69. Thoreau, Henry David – Walden
70. Tillyard, E. M. W. – The Elizabethan World Picture
71. Tolstoy, Leo – War and Peace
72. Undset, Sigrid – Kristin Lavransdatter
73. Virgil – The Aeneid
74. Williams, Joseph M. – Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace
75. Wolff, Virginia – To the Lighthouse

Making the List of 75 Things To Do with 75 Repetitions Each for My 75th Year of Life

      On July 20, 2018, I turned 74 years old.

On the coast in Corsica, a month before my 74th birthday

That means I am now in my 75th year. Whoa! I have to take a deep breath to take that in! It's true that only a month ago I was hiking the GR20 trail on Corsica,

On the GR 20, mid-June, 2018

and only a week ago the nurse at my colonoscopy told me all my vitals were so normal they were boring. ("We love boring!" she said). I'm in good health and good physical condition. So what does "75" mean, anyway? How can I both recognize it and celebrate it?

      Two days ago, the day after my birthday, I was hiking in the Red Buttes, contemplating those questions, when a cartoon-style light bulb lit up. Between now and July 20, 2019, I thought, I could do 75 things of 75 repetitions each. Things like:

            Write 75 people to ask for suggestions of 75 things to do

            Do a 75-mile hike

            Write 75 poems

            Do 75 good deeds

      Brilliant.

      Crazy.

      The more I thought about it, the more elaborate it got. Make 75 cards to send to 75 friends on my birthday. Bake 75 desserts. (Let's see. That would be a different dessert every five days ….) If I had 75 items on the list, each of which had 75 parts to it, I would have to do 15 parts every day for a year – make one dessert, make one card, write one poem – yow! What happened to ordinary life?

      Stupid.

      Crazy.

      But possible? And fun! What I need is more things like, "Do an embroidery with 75 stitches" or "String 75 rosebuds onto a necklace." What I need is help making the list. Besides suggestions like "Read 75 books or magazines," I especially need suggestions like, "Make a list of your favorite books" – things that can be done in hours (or minutes!) rather than days. But any suggestion is fair game, as long as it's reasonable. (But I'll nix any suggestion that says, "Do 75 push-ups.")

      Do you want to join the fun? Send me your ideas of things to put on the list. It currently has 31 items, so I need lots more.

      This blog will keep current with progress on a daily basis (or as close as I can come to it). Here's a list of the items so far. Other ideas are pending.

CRAFTS
1. String 75 rosebuds or beads
2. Make 75 cards for 75 friends to mail on my birthday
3. Collect 75 favorite photographs and put them into a book
4. Find 75 rocks and make an Andy Goldsworthy-style art piece for my zen garden
5. Make a trivet with 75 wine bottle corks
6. Create a collage of 75 pieces (or a collage representing each year of your life)
7. Cook 75 new dishes
8. Bake 75 cookies and give to 75 strangers
9. Make an embroidery piece or quilt with 75 panels
10. Make 75 origami Christmas tree ornaments
11. Knit a shawl based on knit 1, purl 1, for 75 stitches in a row
12. Press 75 flowers

WRITING AND LEARNING
13. Write something with 75 words (poem, essay, blog post)
14. Write 75 poems
15. Keep a book and blog post of all the 75s I'm doing
16. Write 75 prayers for the planet and humanity
17. Write about 75 places you love and why
18. Work 75 New York Times crossword puzzles
19. Learn to say "hi" in 75 languages; or learn 75 new words in one language; or learn to count to 75 in a new language
20. Add 75 new words to your vocabulary
21. Memorize 75 lines of poetry

ACTIVE
22. Begin each morning with 75 deep breaths; or do deep breathing 3 times a day in sets of  twenty-five
23. Go on a 75-mile hike
24. Find 75 different kinds of leaves
25. Hug 75 trees
26. Plant 75 daffodils (or other flowers)
27. Plant 75 poppy seeds
28. Identify 75 different botanical items on one hike
29. See and identify 75 different animals (not insects, except for butterflies)
30. Jump rope 75 times
31. Do 75 hikes
32. Collect 75 rocks for the zen garden
33. Pick 75 wildflowers and make an arrangement in every room
34. Go to 75 places you haven't been to before
35. Take 75 minutes of doing nothing
36. Visit 75 of your closest friends
37. Bring home a stone from each walk you take and make a pile in the yard
38. Stretch and dance for 75 minutes, uninterrupted
39. Get a 75-minute massage
40. Collect 75 items to put on an altar on you 75th birthday
41. Take 75 naps

LISTS
36. Write 75 memories of other people
37. Make a list of your 75 favorite books
38. Make a list of 75 places I want to visit or things I want to do
39. Make a list of people who accomplished big things after the age of 75
40. Make a list of 75 things I love about Ela, Mike, sisters, friends, things I do
41. List 75 favorite hikes I've done – with an adjective for each
42. Write down a memory from each year of my life
43. List 75 quotes from messages from friends and family

COMMUNITY
44. Ask 75 people for ideas for the list (DONE: July 22, 2018)
45. Donate $75 to your favorite charity (to your favorite non-profit newspaper, i.e., the Applegater)
46. Get 75 $1 bills and tip "those wonderful baristas" one bill at a time
47. Invite 75 friends to your birthday event
48. Write 75 political action emails, letters, phone calls
49. Send emails to 75 friends asking for monetary birthday gifts of $.75, $7.50, $75.00, $750 that I would donate to my choice of political or environmental group

MISCELLANEOUS
50. Give 75 compliments
51. Give 75 kisses
52. Try 75 different types of chocolate
53. Try 75 new wines
54. Respectfully ask 75 people for one spanking each
55. Spend $75 at the store, no more, no less
56. Eat 75 blueberries for breakfast
57. Count 75 sheep before going to sleep