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:

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!