From Arabic to Zulu

      (Somehow this post got omitted during the year. So I'm posting it now.)
      I can greet you in Ojibwe ("Anin"), Swahili ("Habari"), or Rumanian ("Buna") If you like, I could say "hello" to you in Hindi, Inuktitut, and Serbian, too, and in fact, in 69 other languages. I could ask you your name in all those languages, and I could say goodbye to you. In other words, I have successfully met my granddaughter's 75-repetitions challenge: to learn how to say, "Hello," "What is your name?" and "Goodbye" in 75 languages.

      I loved this project! I loved my granddaughter for giving it to me, challenging as it was. Learning these phrases took me all around the world, so I got a little geography lesson along with glimpses into the languages themselves, in all their varieties. Oh, wonderful, wonderful world.

      I started on July 21 with languages that would be easy for me: Swedish, Finnish, Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic. My method was to find five languages at a time with YouTube clips showing me how to pronounce them, then make a print-out of the three phrases in the five languages with my own pronunciation designations under the correct spellings. When I had memorized those, I made flash cards of them, which I took on my daily walk. The bulk of cards grew slowly. Sometimes I would get languages mixed up, but repetition did wonders. The earlier languages I learned that I had thought so difficult – Basque, Welsh, Estonian – were soon as comfortable on my tongue as French and German. Now Tamil is as easily said as Hebrew, and Tagalog as Korean.
        Below is a list of the languages I learned.

“Hello,” “What’s your name?” “Good-by” in 75 languages

75x75 item suggested by Kairos Lamblin (my 10-year-old granddaughter)

American sign language                                 Lithuanian                              

Arabic                                                             Luxembourgish

Azerbaijani                                                     Mam

Balinese                                                          Maori

Basque                                                            Marshallese

Belarussian                                                     Mongolian

Bengali                                                            Nepali

Bulgarian                                                        Norwegian

Burmese                                                          Ojibwe

Catalan                                                            Old English

Chinese                                                           Pashto

Chiwewa                                                         Polish

Croatian                                                          Portuguese

Czech                                                              Punjabi

Danish                                                             Rumanian

Dutch                                                              Russian

Dzongkha                                                        Samoan

Estonian                                                          Sanskrit

Farsi                                                                Serbian

Finnish                                                            Sinhala

French                                                             Somali

German                                                           Spanish

Greek                                                              Sumerian

Hawaiian                                                         Swahili

Hebrew                                                           Swedish          

Hindi                                                               Tamil

Hungarian                                                       Telugu

Icelandic                                                         Thai

Inuktitut                                                          Togalog

Irish                                                                 Turkish

Italian                                                              Urdu

Japanese                                                          Vietnamese

Khmer                                                             Welsh

Kinyarwanda                                                  Xhosa

Korean                                                            Yiddish

Kurmanji                                                         Yoruba

Latin                                                                Zulu

Latvian

Culmination: The 75x75 Party

        It was a wonderful party. It couldn't have been better. Between 30 and 35 people came with their  "75" tribute—75 blessings to hand out; 75 cards for people to write something about me on, which were then given to me in a nice box; 75 spoonsful of sugar in the fudge contribution to the potluck; 75 bachelor buttons (flowers); a 75-words poem about me; 75 meatballs; and a home-made puzzle of 75 pieces with "Happy birthday, Diana" on it, which people put together at the party. I recited the 75-line poem "Frost at Midnight," with only a few stumbles (although I had done it perfectly many times before). I wore the crown of 75 dried flowers and the necklace of 75 beads I had made a few days before, finishing the last of the 75 items. The pot-luck dinner was great—people walked by with plates piled high—and my cakes were beautiful, the linzertorte cake the hands-down favorite, so exotic looking, with its beautiful raspberry-jam top and filbert-encrusted sides, all decorated with white cream-cheese stars.

Most important of all, of course, was the display of the 75s. Not everything lent itself to display (take 75 naps, eat 75 blueberries for breakfast, jump rope 75 times for 75 days), but I set out the craft items—a small knitted table pad, based on 5 purls, 5 knits 15 times in a row (and, yes, someone counted); the table runner of 75 quilt squares; a trivet made of 75 wine corks with a quote wood-burned around the base: "What though youth/Gave us love and roses/Age still leaves us/Friends and wine" (Thomas Moore, 1779-1852); the 75-piece collage; a small, framed embroidery of 75 stitches; the 75 cards I made; and the 75 pieces of wood-burned driftwood, each with a different word on it, lined up along the edges of the table. 

There was a basket of 75 origami pieces and the 75-word WordArt.com piece I had made. And there were all the books I had made: 75 favorite photographs, 75 favorite hikes (each on a page, with a photo), 75 pressed flowers, 75 drawings of different botanical species on my land, 75 people who had accomplished significant things over the age of 75, 75 poems about aging, 75 pictures of me hugging a tree, 75 poems I had written of 75 words each; and a folder of lists people had challenged me to make. I set out the jar of donations (in 75s) for the Applegater, which got a few more contributions that evening. Above the table, on the house wall, I taped the list of 75 things of 75 repetitions each I had done over the past year, each identified with the name of the person who had suggested that item. Next to the display table was another small table with the 75 items I had chosen for the altar (one of the 75 suggestions on the 75x75 list).

        All evening people drew from my basket of flash cards for learning 75 languages and asked me to say, "Hello. What's your name? Good-bye" in that language. (I knew them all. The only time I got two mixed up I corrected myself immediately.) People also kept coming up to me to say, "I love the book of tree-hugging," or "Your poems about Mike are heart-renderingly sweet." All the books I set out were read—I know because each one was at one time or another proclaimed a favorite by someone or other. People even complimented my drawings of plants on the land, calling them "zen in their simplicity." They marveled at all I had accomplished this past year and asked me how I had done it. "A little at a time," I said. The best answer would have been to show them my Excel spread sheet, but I didn't know how to print it and don't know how to upload it here, either, to my chagrin. 

        My guests represented various aspects of my life: the Applegater board, skiing friends, hiking friends, long-time friends from the Applegate, teaching at Rogue Community College. They came from as far away as Ashland, Medford, and Grants Pass. They were people I have known for more than forty years and one woman I had met only the weekend before—all wonderful friends, who participated in the party (and many of them in the 75x75 project by suggesting items) with enthusiasm and delight. Everyone loved my house and its surroundings —the mountain, the woods, the garden. The weather was perfect. As people left, each had a card from the 75 I had made, an origami ornament, and a driftwood word picked from the collection at the edge of the table—and a packet of trail mix, each with 75 pieces of nuts or fruits.

        Mike's participation was inestimably valuable. In addition to helping me set up for the party and keeping guests supplied with drinks during it, what I appreciated most was the "75s" item he gave me for my birthday: "75 Things I Love about Diana." I was so touched by the things he said! But maybe the best part was that when I said, before I had finished reading the list, "Oh, Mike, 75 is a big number," knowing full well what it took to come up with a list of 75 things, he said, "It wasn't even hard."

      We cleaned up that night, since we couldn't leave anything out that the bear might get into. It wasn't late when we finished, but we were exhausted. I crawled into bed with a deliriously happy-tired feeling, my head was swimming with 7500 words of praise, appreciation, and love from so many of my friends.

Finishing the 75s

     What a year it's been! I have loved the challenges, the memories, the crafts, the involvement of friends. It has all been so much fun. How can I summarize it all and do credit to it?
        I could start with Mike. Again and again I pulled him into a project. "Let's go to Redwoods National Park so I can hug a redwood tree." "I want to collect driftwood to woodburn words onto. Do you want to go to the coast with me?" "I need a wooden base for my trivet of 75 wine corks. Can you make me one?" He dug holes for me to plant 75 daffodil bulbs. He joined me on many of the 75 hikes, and they were more fun because he was there. He did the 75-mile hike with me, down the Rogue River trail and back up again. We went to the Klamath National Wildlife Refuge because I needed to see more birds and to the Wildlife Safari in Roseburg because I needed more animals for my list. Maybe his favorite of my 75s was to try 75 new wines. I served him a lot of the 75 new dishes I cooked. We worked a lot of the 75 crossword puzzles together, and since that was his item, he didn't consider it a cheat that I didn't do all 75 by myself (although I did do that, too). He quizzed me on "Hello. What's your name? Good-bye" in 75 languages and listened to recitations of the 75-line poem, "Frost at Midnight." He made a 75s donation to the Applegater. Day after day he endured my year-long obsession as I reported on the latest conversation with a stranger or how many pieces of trash I had picked up on Thompson Creek Road, read him the latest 75-word poem or showed him the 75 origami ornaments. From the day I thought of doing 75 things of 75 repetitions each – while I was hiking with him and my son, Ela, on my 74th birthday – to the last item to be checked off the list, Mike has shared the project with me. That has been one of the best things about it.
        Another way to summarize the project is to make "best" awards, as in:
        Most Challenging Item: Learning to say "Hello. What's your name? Good-bye" in 75 languages. My granddaughter gave me that challenge, and what a great idea it was! I learned a bit of geography (e.g., Chiwewa is spoken in Zaire, Mozambique, and Malawi), noted similarities in languages (variations of "nom" for "name" in some languages, of "ignoa" for "name" in others), national customs reflected in language – different words when addressing one person or more than one, the necessity of bowing along with greetings, the different greetings and bows according to the social standing of the person greeted. My YouTube source for Balinese said that to say good-bye, one says, "Om, shanti, shanti, shanti om" – "three times," he emphasized, but I wonder how well modern young people adhere to that custom. I will be so sorry when I start forgetting these languages.
        Other "most challenging": The 75-mile hike turned out to be not nearly as challenging as it sounded, but going to 75 new places was harder than I had expected because I hadn't realized what a rut I run in – same restaurants, same routes, same stores, even the same trails to hike. Coming up with a memory for each year of my life was challenging, too, not so much for finding the memory but for straightening out the year it happened in. I'm not very good with dates.
        Most fun: They were all fun, but I especially enjoyed hugging 75 trees. All the crafts were fun – the knitting, quilting, embroidery, collage, cooking. I loved making all the books and writing the poems. It was fun talking to a man from the Philippines and asking him his name in Togalog. The whole thing was fun all year 'round.
        Most difficult: Probably drawing 75 botanical species from my land. I'm far from a botanical artist, so the drawing was difficult, but I liked walking all over my 32 acres trying to find new plants (that I could identify and that I was willing to try to draw), and I found that the inscription in the book  was apt: "Enjoy your time in nature." Those moments I spent sitting in the forest, focused on a plant, were indeed enjoyable.
        Other "most difficult": I don't like to ask friends for money, even for a good cause, but the outpouring of donations for the Applegater, in combinations of 75 ($.75, $75, 3x$7.50, etc.) was uplifting and made the difficult moment of asking worth it. Thanks to everyone who contributed, from the three quarters my granddaughter sent me in the mail to the check for $750 from my friend who suggested this item. It was difficult to count 75 sheep before going to bed because I kept falling asleep before I got to 75. I had such a hard time finding 75 pieces of music "that moved or delighted me" that I augmented the list, at the end, with a handful of theater experiences, theater being as meaningful to me as music. But one thing I learned as I worked on the 75s was to tweak the suggestion to fit my circumstances.
       Easiest: Eating 75 blueberries for breakfast. What kept the 75-minute massage from being the easiest item was that it was hard to make it end after 75 minutes.
        The one I most regret having to drop from the list: The 75 swims. Maybe I could have done them if the  smoke hadn't been so bad last summer that I was forced to stay indoors. Then it was winter, and by the time warm enough weather for swimming came along, I added up days and realized that even if I were able to take an hour's drive every day to swim in the Applegate Lake, which wouldn't have been possible, anyway, I didn't have enough days left to finish the 75 swims. Some people suggested I swim at the Y, but that isn't my kind of swimming.
        Other regrets: I really liked the suggestion to visit 75 friends. I thought it would motivate me to see friends who live at a distance and whom I seldom see as well as many friends who live in the area who deserve a visit. Alas, it didn't happen. I finally admitted to myself that I didn't have time to do all that visiting, even though it was a very good idea. Maybe I'll just stretch it out beyond my 75th year and try to visit 75 friends even yet.
        The 75 hikes and skis were great.
        Biggest surprise: Not only that I could meditate for 75 minutes but that I enjoyed it as well. I was also surprised that I could pick up a jumprope (first time since childhood!) and jump 75 times and like it enough to do it for 75 days and that I liked running 75 yards so much I doubled it before I stopped.
        No surprise: That I never did get over not wanting to talk to strangers. Often it was fun and I came away with warm feelings for that stranger. Other times I came away thinking, with irritation, "That's why I don't like talking to strangers." Still, as my sister said, it was good for me.  
        Most satisfactory: Writing 75 poems of 75 words each.
        Most gratifying: That so many friends participated with such enthusiasm. Many of them will be here to celebrate with me on my birthday this Saturday, the culmination of the 75x75s. It will be a grand party, my thank-you to them for giving me this year of challenge and fun.
        Most worrisome: What will I do with myself now that the 75s are over?
     
     

The Home Stretch

       My birthday is July 20. I have a little more than a week to finish doing 75 things of 75 repetitions each.
        I'm doing well. I know I'll finish. I won't even have to work hard to fit everything in. This is what's left:
        (1) String 75 beads. The only thing hindering me is to decide already what I'm going to wear to my party so I can make beads to go with it. One dress would take beads in reds and purples, the other beads in blues and greens.
        (2) I have to cook 5 more new dishes. I have ingredients for a salmon spinach phyllo pie from The Folk School Cookbook, from the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina, that my sister, who teaches calligraphy there, gave me for Christmas. I'll make that dish tomorrow, along with toads-in-the-hole, a British sausage-and-popover breakfast dish from the same cookbook. I'll make two other new dishes next week and a new cake for my birthday, and that item will be done.
        (3) I need to stretch and dance uninterrupted for 75 minutes one of these days soon.
        (4) I need to do 6 more yoga poses. I have certainly done more than 75 different yoga poses this year, but often by the time I get home from yoga class, I have forgotten their names. A few months ago, my sister Sharon helped me make a list of 40 poses I knew I hadn't yet done. Since then I've been religiously recording them. Six more could be done in one yoga practice: crow, suptavirasana, vasisthasana (side plank, in two variations) sitting twist, high lunge, and high lunge with hands overhead.
        (5) I am still writing down something or someone I'm grateful for every 4.8 days. The latest one was "for young people who love farming." I did an interview for the Applegater the other day with a young woman who raises pigs and goats for profit. She did a WWOOFing program in Spain and Portugal for a couple of years, then interned at an organic farm in southern Oregon. She wants to do everything "right." She had a wonderful attitude towards her animals. She scratched her pigs on the head, laughed at the piglets, and picked up a duck to take it out of the pen. I am, yes, grateful for people like that.
        And that'll be it: the end of the 75s challenge for my 75th year.
        I've invited 75 people to my birthday party – more than 75, really, hoping to come close to having 75 people here. The theme of the party is "75," obviously, I guess, but my idea is that people who come to the party will begin to understand what I've been saying all year – "75 is a big number" – by bringing something "75" to the party (e.g., 75 pieces of chocolate to share, 75 fortunes to give out) or doing something "75" (e.g., jumping rope 75 times, keeping a ball in the air for 75 counts – things I'll have available at the party). I'll let people take home one of the 75 pieces of driftwood on which I wood-burned 75 different words and one of the 75 cards I made. I'll have the lists of 75s I've made – 75 favorite things, 75 places I love, 75 memories of other people, 75 botanical species on one hike, 75 prayers for the earth and humanity, 75 favorite books, 75 thank-yous to individuals who were "there for me" during difficult times in my life; 75 pieces of music that moved and delighted me; 75 new words added to my vocabulary. Guests can look at the books of 75s: 75 poems, by various poets, about aging; 75 favorite hikes I've done (with a photo for each); 75 people who have accomplished great things after the age of 75. They can read my 75 poems  of 75 words each (with a few exceptions: poems I wrote before I upped the ante by making them 75 words each). I'll have my collage of 75 pieces on display, as well as the knitted piece created with rows of 5 knit, 5 purl, to a total of 75, and the quilt of 75 squares and the embroidery of 75 stitches. I'll have an altar of 75 pieces. I'll recite a poem of 75 lines ("Frost at Midnight," by Samuel Taylor Coleridge), and I'll have my flash cards of 75 languages available for guests to choose one and at some time during the party come up to me and ask me to say, "Hello. What's your name? Good-bye" in that language. I can do it.
        July 20. Fifteen days. I'm in the home stretch.