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.

Two Months to Go

 This was the report when I was three-quarters of the way through this 75x75 project, around April 20:

     "It's true that I have almost a quarter of the year left before my 75th birthday, and it's true that on March 20 the items on my 75 x 75 list were 78.4% accomplished, so I should be feeling pretty good about things.

      "But 'how to lie with statistics.' There is reason to forestall complacency!

      "The problem is in the nature of what I have left. Many of the tasks already fulfilled were easy ones (eat 75 blueberries for breakfast; sew something with 75 stitches; hike to 7500-foot altitude) or easily accomplished with diligent attention (hug 75 trees, jump rope 75 times for 75 days, see and identify 75 fauna). Some of the things I've marked as 'done' are difficult ones I knew I would need time to do: memorize 'hello, what's your name, good-bye' in 75 languages, memorize a 75-line poem, make 75 pendants with wood-burned words; pick up 75 pieces of trash on my road.

      "What I have left are mostly items that depend on the season (pick 75 wildflowers and make an arrangement for every room in your house; identify 75 botanical things on one hike) or ongoing items that I need to finish. That's where the slight nudge of panic comes in. I have to read 25 more books and magazines, for instance, before July 20. That would be six books a month, or slightly more than one a week. Since March 20 I have read one New Yorker and four books, so I'm doing pretty well this week, but I have to keep alert if I'm going to finish this item. I'm slightly ahead on writing poems of 75 words each. I only have twelve more to write. Four a month should be doable.

      "I've been waiting for good weather and wildflower season to do more on 'identify and draw 75 botanical species on your land,' but I think I had better get to it."

       After that assessment, I had a bigger project to take care of: I got married on May 18, and there were many details to tend to. It was a splendid wedding (see the last two posts on dianacoogle.blogspot.com for a report), and, with the honeymoon over, I have turned my attention back to the 75s project.

        Now that the weather is good, I have started on the last project mentioned above: identifying and drawing 75 botanical species on my land. The little penciled sketches aren't artistically good (I'm no artist), but when I page through the beautiful little leather book of blank pages Louise Nicholson, who suggested this item, gave me, I can see the botanical differences, and each drawing reminds me of the botanical diversity on my land.

        The best thing about doing this item is that it accomplishes what Louise wrote in her inscription in the book: "Enjoy your moments in nature this coming year." This morning, I sat on a rock to draw a cat's ear and an ookow, then moved to another spot to draw the Japanese maple sapling that is an offspring of the Japanese maple I and my siblings gave my mother one Mother's Day and that grew into one of the most beautiful trees on our sloping front lawn. The birds were singing. A slight breeze was blowing. The sky was blue – all the clichés of spring. I was quiet and concentrated on my work, but my senses were open to the whole great big beautiful world of nature around me. I have drawn 28 species so far. Tomorrow I'll go in a different direction and pick up more species.

        Looking at my rate of reading for the past year, I decided to set aside Les Misérables and like-sized books and take up young adult novels instead. The result was to read some excellent books: Sherman Alexi's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian; Judy Blume's Forever; Monica Hesse's Girl in the Blue Coat, which takes place in Nazi-occupied Holland; and Laura Amy Schlitz's The Hired Girl, a clever take on Jane Eyre. By moving into young adult literature, I have moved rapidly towards finishing this item, with 69 books and magazines already read.

        The wedding itself was good for some 75s items. I was able to talk to a lot of strangers, and finished that item. Some interactions were such that I came away saying, "That's why I don't talk to strangers," but others were wonderful moments of brief sharing, which I enjoyed. Thanks to my sister Sharon for pushing me to do that item. The wedding and the honeymoon helped me finish the 75 wines item (suggested by Jim Sartorio) and the suggestion, from Sharon and from Teya Jacoby, to go to 75 new places.  I did several hikes on my honeymoon, bringing the total of hikes since July 20 to 68, so I will easily finish that item. I had a brunch at my house for all members of Mike's family and mine who were able to come to the wedding (about 30 people), so I worked to finish the books of 75s: photographs of hugging 75 trees; leaves of 75 different trees; 

75 favorite photographs; accomplishments of 75 people over the age of 75; 75 poems about aging; photographs of 75 favorite hikes. I had on a shelf but did not wear my crown made with 75 dried flowers.

Although I didn't write any poems about the wedding, I did write a series of poems about the honeymoon (each 75 lines), so I only have to write two more poems to fulfill that item!

        The next push will be the 75-mile hike, which Mike and I will begin next week. We had thought we would go to the Sierra Nevada – Yosemite, maybe, or Emigrant Wilderness Area or Lake Tahoe – but this is a late snow year, and we couldn't find 75 miles we could hike without running into snow. What we needed was a long, low-elevation hike, and the perfect one is right here in Southern Oregon: the Rogue River Trail. It's 40 miles from its beginning at Graves Creek to its end at the Illahe Lodge. We'll camp along the way but spend the night and resupply at Illahe Lodge and start back up the trail the next day. We'll go at a leisurely pace, taking ten days for the whole trip, and in the end I will have hiked five miles beyond the requisite 75. This won't be the first of the 75x75 items I've roped Mike into doing with me, but it's one of the best.

        While I'm on the trail, I'll see if I can identify 75 species on one hike and fulfill that item, too.

A Day at the Ocean for a 75s Project

      My son, Ela, thought a long time before giving me his item for my 75x75 project. It had to be special (not something already on the list), appropriate to me, and doable in the next few months, given both the number of unfinished 75s on my list and my upcoming wedding in May. What he came up with answered all criteria: cut 75 rounds of wood and woodburn a word onto each, making pendants to give to guests at my birthday party.

      As with many of my items, I amended the suggestion. Instead of cutting rounds of wood (I'm not good with a saw), I would collect pieces of driftwood and woodburn words onto them. One of several projects I did for my house while it was being built (while I was getting my Ph.D. at the University of Oregon, eight years ago) was to woodburn quotations on the risers of my stairs. That's one of the reasons Ela's 75s item was so appropriate. That and because words are my thing.

      Collecting driftwood would also be an excuse to spend a day at the coast. Mike, of course, was more than willing to help me. The opportunity came on Sunday of last week. We chose to go to Tolowa Dunes State Park, just outside Crescent City, California.

      We couldn't have chosen a better day. No place in the world could have been more beautiful last week than the northern California coast. The sea was emerald green with a white-froth surf that gentled onto the shore with a soothing, massage-sound-track, underneath-hearing boom. There was nothing violent or seething about it, nothing gray and dark, or intense and loud. The Pacific Ocean had taken a day off from its hard work.

      When we walked over the dunes – and after we recovered from our first stunned look at the emerald-green ocean – I gave Mike a bag and instructions: look for small pieces of driftwood, smooth enough to write on but big enough for words like "graciousness" and "understanding." Pieces with interesting color or shape would be especially good.

      We wandered through scattered driftwood for an hour, then reconvened and spread our finds on the sand. We had about 150 pieces. I threw out some as too big or too rough, too round or too mottled, but I kept most of them, since I couldn't know for sure what would work till I started the project.

      We ate lunch sitting on a log facing that incomparably beautiful ocean, then took a long walk down the long beach, looking towards the mountains of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness white with snow in the distance. Over the dunes, the mountains of the Siskiyou Wilderness rose even closer and were even brighter with snow. The sky was a cloudless blue, the ocean green and white, the mountains purple and white, the wind only a brisk breeze – a perfect day!

      At home that night, I spread my driftwood on the floor to dry out and lose, I hoped, its sand.

I contemplated the project. I would insert eyelets in some, so they could hang from hanging plants or in windows. Others could sit on shelves or be carried in pockets. At my birthday party, people could choose the word that spoke to them and have a memento. Looking through 75 pieces to choose one would give them an idea of how big 75 is.

      The next day I started wood-burning the words: Beauty, Gardens, Generosity, Mountains, Love.

I thought of my sister Sharon as I burned "Yoga" onto a piece of wood; of my daughter-in-law as I wrote "Dance"; of my sister Laura as I wrote "Gardenf; of Ela as I wrote "Rhythm" and a whole lot of other words because the project had been his idea. And of Mike, all evening, because we had had such a special day collecting driftwood at the Pacific Ocean on one of the most beautiful days the Northern California coast has to offer.

The 75 words burned onto driftwood

Amazement                Fullness                     Love                    Solidity

Art                              Garden                      Loveliness            Song

Beauty                        Generosity                Magic                   Stars

The blessing of rain   Gladness                    Merriment           Strength

Bliss                           Good deeds               Mindfulness         Sunshine

Caring                        Good health               Moon                  Touch

Cheerfulness              Goodheartedness       Mountains           Trees

Color                          Goodness                  Music                   Understanding

Community                Graciousness             Nature                 Vibrancy

Compassion               Gratitude                   Peace                   Voluptuousness

Courage                     Happiness                  Pleasure               Warmth

Creativity                   Heart                         Plenty                   Water

Dance                         Home                        Poetry                   Whimsy

Depth                         Hope                         Presence                Wonder

Empathy                    Humor                       Respect                  Yoga

Family                       Insight                       Rhythm

Festivity                     Joy                            Richness

Flowers                      Kindness                   Rivers

Forgiveness               Laughter                    Smiles

Friendship                 Light                          Snow

Seventy-five Fauna Finished

      Because I live in a rural area, finding animals for the list of 75 fauna I was challenged to see and identify was at first easy and fun. I was spotting cats and dogs, cows and sheep, goats, horses, and pigs every time I drove down the road. Then suddenly it seemed as though I had seen every animal there was to see in the Applegate. Bob Cook, who had given me this item, stipulated that insects didn't count, except for butterflies, so I listed two or three different butterflies I found at the end of the summer. Birds didn't count, either, because I have a separate 75s challenge to see and identify 75 birds. On September 12 I saw an alligator lizard, and then nothing but a banana slug until November 6, when I saw a herd of elk as I was hiking up Table Rock Mountain early that morning.

      A trip to the High Desert Museum in Bend, Oregon, over the Christmas holiday added three animals (porcupine, two different kinds of trout, and a bobcat), and I caught sight of a fox close to my house on January 5, but I was beginning to realize how unlikely it would be that I would see 27 new kinds of animals before July 20. More intense concentration was called for. I invited Mike to go with me to the Wildlife Safari near Roseburg, a couple of hours from my house. There, I was sure, I would see at least 27 new animals.

      In spite of the dense fog at the beginning of our drive through this open-range zoo, where the people are encaged in their cars and the animals run free, we began seeing animals almost at once. A dazzle of zebras trotted across a hillside, their beautiful striped forms zigzagging through the fog.

 The Watusi cattle had enormous, graceful horns. The white rhinoceros was barely visible through the fog and the hippopotamus barely visible in the mud, but I did see them. We saw yaks and dik-diks, pythons and lemurs, lions and several kinds of deer and elk. We saw flamingos and rheas, but, of course, those counted on my 75 birds list, not the 75 fauna.

     Altogether it was a very satisfying day, and I successfully completed this item on my 75x75 project. In addition, I was inspired to write a number of poems about the animals, so I also moved forward on the item to write 75 poems of 75 words each. Here are two of the poems:

Tibetan Yaks

Three yaks stood under trees
their long black hair,
like a Mexican sweetheart's,
lush and lustrous.
One lifted a long silky tail
and waved it gently
its gorgeous white tresses
swaying like a bridal veil.
Unlike the mud-caked bison
stubbornly walking the road,
the yaks were clean, and,
having absorbed the zen of their nation
mindful,
completely "in the moment"
which was:
the shade of the trees,
the food provided,
the beauty of their being.


Watching Flamingos with Mike

You said, "There's no such color in nature"
a weird coral cum rose cum orangish pink
accentuated by the hot-pink
on the knees' kinky pink knobs
and the feet's pink webs.
Feathers fluffy as a flapper's pink boa
Legs so ink-thin you'd think they couldn't hold
the pink blood of the frilly pink bird
who, with a wink, a blink, and plink-plank-plink
just on the brink of what you think natural,
tickles me pink.

Collage

     I had not looked forward to the 75s item, suggested by Mariposa and Ni Aódagain, that I make a collage of 75 pieces. It was a good idea, but I don't particularly like making collages. My son suggested I concentrate on words, since words are closer to my heart than images, so I started tearing relevant words from magazines but without much enthusiasm. I just wasn't yet inspired.

      The first inspiration came at Christmas, when my son gave me a round piece of masonite, already gessoed, that I knew immediately would be the surface for the collage. The second impetus was when my eye fell on my decades-long post card collection. I loved those post cards. I have often gone through them just for the pleasure of it. I have used them as writing prompts in creative writing classes, and my old house, I made three large screens of sewn-together post cards. Some of them still have ragged stitches. Why couldn't I now cut them up for images in a collage?

      Suddenly I loved the idea of making a collage of 75 pieces.

   Dividing the collection into categories – animals, people, mountains, lakes, ocean, architecture, places, and so on – gave me a chance to look closely at each beloved post card again. Here were many cards Maren, my dear friend who died three or four years ago, had sent me from her travels. Here were mountain pictures from my backpacking partner Phil. Here were post cards from friends who have died, from friends who have passed out of my life, from my son, my sister, former boy friends, friends from the past, acquaintances writing to say, "We had a good time with you," and beloved friends who live far from me. Here were pictures of places I had been and places I would probably never see. Here were tributes to me and thank-you cards and love notes. For hours ghosts from the past fluttered around me, kissing me on the cheek, patting my head as I worked.

      After categorizing the post cards, I picked from each category the cards I knew I would want in the collage – those whose images I have always loved, those depicting places special to me in my life, those with pictures that seemed representative of me. Those cards totaled about 65, which was just about right. The other ten or so would come as I worked.

      I found that I had to cut the post cards into very small pieces to get 75 in one collage. For the center I used a painting of a woman reclining with a book, cut round. I arranged the pictures by categories around her; then I rearranged them by color. Then, carefully, I glued them on. The whole project took three days.

     This may not be a stunning art piece, but I love it. It is a collage of 75 years of my life. There is a backpacker on the board and a skier and swimmers in the ocean. There are art and food and music. There are flowers, birds, trees, animals of all kinds. There are place I have lived – Vanderbilt University, Cambridge, Sweden; places I have visited – Greece, France, Denmark; and places I love – Crater Lake National Park, Ashland, the Oregon coast. There are lakes and rivers and mountains. There are pictures with memories of friends deeply embedded. 

      There are also, of course, words: "Friends," "Théatre de l'Opéra," "Zornsamlingarna" ("Collections of the Swedish painter Anders Zorn," whose house I visited with Maren), and, across the picture of the reclining woman in the center of the collage, a quote by Rumi that was on one of my post cards: "Let the beauty we love be what we do." Indeed. That's what the whole collage is about.

With thanks to Mariposa and Ni Aódagain for setting me on this journey.

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: